Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles | Page 8

from my soul they draw their sweet or
smart,
And from her eye, my soul's best life is lent;
Which heavenly
eye that lights both earth and air,
Quells by depart and quickens by
repair.
DEMADES
Give period to the process of thy plaint,
Unhappy Damon, witty in
self-grieving;
Tend thou thy flocks; let tyrant love attaint
Those

tender hearts that made their love their living.
And as kind time keeps
Phillis from thy sight,
So let prevention banish fancy quite.
Cast hence this idle fuel of desire,
That feeds that flame wherein thy
heart consumeth;
Let reason school thy will which doth aspire,
And
counsel cool impatience that presumeth;
Drive hence vain thoughts
which are fond love's abettors, For he that seeks his thraldom merits
fetters.
The vain idea of this deity
Nursed at the teat of thine imagination,

Was bred, brought up by thine own vanity,
Whose being thou mayst
curse from the creation;
And so thou list, thou may as soon forget
love,
As thou at first didst fashion and beget love.
DAMON
Peace, Demades, peace shepherd, do not tempt me;
The sage-taught
wife may speak thus, but not practise;
Rather from life than from my
love exempt me,
My happy love wherein my weal and wrack lies;

Where chilly age first left love, and first lost her, There youth found
love, liked love, and love did foster.
Not as ambitious of their[C] own decay,
But curious to equal your
fore-deeds,
So tread we now within your wonted way;
We find your
fruits of judgments and their seeds;
We know you loved, and loving
learn that lore;
You scorn kind love, because you can no more.
Though from this pure refiner of the thought
The gleanings of your
learnings have you gathered
Your lives had been abortive, base and
naught,
Except by happy love they had been fathered;
Then still the
swain, for I will still avow it;
They have no wit nor worth that
disallow it.
Then to renew the ruins of my tears
Be thou no hinderer, Demades, I
pray thee.
If my love-sighs grow tedious in thine ears,
Fly me, that

fly from joy, I list not stay thee.
Mourn sheep, mourn lambs, and
Damon will weep by you; And when I sigh, "Come home, sweet
Phillis," cry you.
Come home, sweet Phillis, for thine absence causeth
A flowerless
prime-tide in these drooping meadows;
To push his beauties forth
each primrose pauseth,
Our lilies and our roses like coy widows

Shut in their buds, their beauties, and bemoan them,
Because my
Phillis doth not smile upon them.
The trees by my redoubled sighs long blasted
Call for thy balm-sweet
breath and sunny eyes,
To whom all nature's comforts are hand-fasted;

Breathe, look on them, and they to life arise;
They have new
liveries with each smile thou lendest,
And droop with me, when thy
fair brow thou bendest.
I woo thee, Phillis, with more earnest weeping
Than Niobe for her
dead issue spent;
I pray thee, nymph who hast our spring in keeping,

Thou mistress of our flowers and my content,
Come home, and
glad our meads of winter weary,
And make thy woeful Damon blithe
and merry.
Else will I captive all my hopes again,
And shut them up in prisons of
despair,
And weep such tears as shall destroy this plain,
And sigh
such sighs as shall eclipse the air,
And cry such cries as love that
hears my crying
Shall faint and weep for grief and fall a-dying.
My little world hath vowed no sun shall glad it,
Except thy little
world her light discover,
Of which heavens would grow proud if so
they had it.
Oh how I fear lest absent Jove should love her!
I fear it,
Phillis, for he never saw one
That had more heaven-sweet looks to
lure and awe one.
I swear to thee, all-seeing sovereign
Rolling heaven's circles round
about our center,
Except my Phillis safe return again,
No joy to

heart, no meat to mouth shall enter.
All hope (but future hope to be
renowned,
For weeping Phillis) shall in tears be drowned.
DEMADES
How large a scope lends Damon to his moan,
Wafting those treasures
of his happy wit
In registering his woeful woe-begone!
Ah bend thy
muse to matters far more fit!
For time shall come when Phillis is
interred,
That Damon shall confess that he hath erred.
When nature's riches shall, by time dissolved,
Call thee to see with
more judicial eye
How Phillis' beauties are to dust resolved,
Thou
then shalt ask thyself the reason why
Thou wert so fond, since Phillis
was so frail,
To praise her gifts that should so quickly fail.
Have mercy on thyself, cease being idle,
Let reason claim and gain of
will his homage;
Rein in these brain-sick thoughts with judgment's
bridle, A short prevention helps a mighty domage.
If Phillis love,
love her, yet love her so
That if she fly, thou may'st love's fire forego.
Play with the fire, yet die not in the flame;
Show passions in thy
words, but not in heart;
Lest when thou think to bring thy thoughts in
frame,
Thou prove thyself a prisoner by thine art.
Play with these
babes of love, as apes with glasses,
And put no trust in feathers, wind,