Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles | Page 7

pomp, heart's bliss; I pine; for what? for grief, for
thought, for strife;
I faint; and why? because I see my miss.

Oh

ceaseless pains that never may be told,
You make me weep as I to
water would!
Ah weary hopes, in deep oblivious streams
Go seek
your graves, since you have lost your grounds!
Ah pensive heart, seek
out her radiant gleams!
For why? Thy bliss is shut within those
bounds!
All traitorous eyes, to[o] feeble in for[e] sight,
Grow dim
with woe, that now must want your light!
I part from bliss to dwell
with ceaseless moan,
I part from life, since I from beauty part,
I part
from peace, to pine in care alone,
I part from ease to die with dreadful
smart.
I part--oh death! for why? this world contains
More care and
woe than with despair remains.
Oh loath depart, wherein such
sorrows dwell,
As all conceits are scant the same to tell!
XVII
Ah fleeting weal, ah sly deluding sleep,
That in one moment giv'st me
joy and pain!
How do my hopes dissolve to tears in vain,
As wont
the snows, 'fore angry sun to weep!
Ah noisome life that hath no weal
in keep!
My forward grief hath form and working might;
My
pleasures like the shadows take their flight;
My path to bliss is
tedious, long and steep.
Twice happy thou Endymion that embracest

The live-long night thy love within thine arms,
Where thou fond
dream my longèd weal defacest
Whilst fleeting and uncertain shades
thou placest
Before my eyes with false deluding charms!
Ah instant
sweets which do my heart revive,
How should I joy if you were true
alive!
XVIII
As where two raging venoms are united,
Which of themselves
dissevered life would sever,
The sickly wretch of sickness is acquited,

Which else should die, or pine in torments ever;
So fire and frost,
that hold my heart in seizure,
Restore those ruins which themselves
have wrought,
Where if apart they both had had their pleasure,
The
earth long since her fatal claim had caught.
Thus two united deaths

keep me from dying;
I burne in ice, and quake amidst the fire,
No
hope midst these extremes or favour spying;
Thus love makes me a
martyr in his ire.
So that both cold and heat do rather feed
My
ceaseless pains, than any comfort breed.
XIX
Thou tyrannizing monarch that dost tire
My love-sick heart through
those assaulting eyes,
That are the lamps which lighten my desire!

If nought but death thy fury may suffice,
Not for my peace, but for
thy pleasure be it,
That Phillis, wrathful Phillis that repines me
All
grace but death, may deign to come and see it,
And seeing grieve at
that which she assigns me.
This only boon for all my mortal bane
I
crave and cry for at thy mercy seat:
That when her wrath a faithful
heart hath slain,
And soul is fled, and body reft of heat,
She might
perceive how much she might command,
That had my life and death
within her hand.
XX
Some praise the looks, and others praise the locks
Of their fair queens,
in love with curious words;
Some laud the breast where love his
treasure locks,
All like the eye that life and love affords.
But none
of these frail beauties and unstable
Shall make my pen riot in
pompous style;
More greater gifts shall my grave muse enable,

Whereat severer brows shall never smile.
I praise her honey-sweeter
eloquence,
Which from the fountain of true wisdom floweth,
Her
modest mien that matcheth excellence,
Her matchless faith which
from her virtue groweth;
And could my style her happy virtues equal,

Time had no power her glories to enthral.
EGLOGA PRIMA DEMADES DAMON
DEMADES

Now scourge of winter's wrack is well nigh spent,
And sun gins look
more longer on our clime,
And earth no more to sorrow doth consent,

Why been thy looks forlorn that view the prime?
Unneth thy flocks
may feed to see thee faint,
Thou lost, they lean, and both with woe
attaint.
For shame! Cast off these discontented looks;
For grief doth
wait on life, though never sought;
So Thenot wrote admired for pipe
and books.
Then to the spring attemper thou thy thought,
And let
advice rear up thy drooping mind,
And leave to weep thy woes unto
the wind.
DAMON
Ah Demades, no wonder though I wail,
For even the spring is winter
unto me!
Look as the sun the earth doth then avail,
When by his
beams her bowels warmèd be;
Even so a saint more sun-bright in her
shining
First wrought my weal, now hastes my winter's pining.
Which lovely lamp withdrawn from my poor eyes,
Both parts of earth
and fire drowned up in woe
In winter dwell. My joy, my courage dies;

My lambs with me that do my winter know
For pity scorn the
spring that nigheth near,
And pine to see their master's pining cheer.

The root which yieldeth sap unto the tree
Draws from the earth the
means that make it spring;
And by the sap the scions fostered be,

All from the sun have comfort and increasing
And that fair eye that
lights this earthly ball
Kills by depart, and nearing cheereth all.
As
root to tree, such is my tender heart,
Whose sap is thought, whose
branches are content;
And