Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles | Page 5

me!
XI
Tears, vows and prayers gain the hardest hearts,?Tears, vows and prayers have I spent in vain;?Tears cannot soften flint nor vows convert;?Prayers prevail not with a quaint disdain.?I lose my tears where I have lost my love,?I vow my faith where faith is not regarded,?I pray in vain a merciless to move;?So rare a faith ought better be rewarded.?Yet though I cannot win her will with tears,?Though my soul's idol scorneth all my vows,?Though all my prayers be to so deaf ears,?No favour though the cruel Fair allows,?Yet will I weep, vow, pray to cruel she;?Flint, frost, disdain, wears, melts and yields, we see.
XII
My spotless love hovers with purest wings?About the temple of the proudest frame,?Where blaze those lights, fairest of earthly things;?Which clear our clouded world with brightest flame.?M'ambitious thoughts, confin��d in her face,?Affect no honour but what she can give;?My hopes do rest in limits of her grace;?I weigh no comfort unless she relieve.?For she that can my heart imparadise,?Holds in her fairest hand what dearest is.?My fortune's wheel's the circle of her eyes,?Whose rolling grace deign once a turn of bliss.?All my life's sweet consists in her alone,?So much I love the most unloving one.
XIII
Behold what hap Pygmalion had to frame?And carve his proper grief upon a stone!?My heavy fortune is much like the same;?I work on flint and that's the cause I moan.?For hapless lo, even with mine own desires?I figured on the table of my heart?The fairest form that the world's eye admires,?And so did perish by my proper art.?And still I toil to change the marble breast?Of her whose sweetest grace I do adore,?Yet cannot find her breathe unto my rest.?Hard is her heart, and woe is me therefore.?O happy he that joyed his stone and art!?Unhappy I, to love a stony heart!
XIV
Those snary locks are those same nets, my dear,?Wherewith my liberty thou didst surprise?Love was the flame that fir��d me so near,?The dart transpiercing were those crystal eyes.?Strong is the net, and fervent is the flame;?Deep is the wound my sighs can well report.?Yet I do love, adore, and praise the same,?That holds, that burns, that wounds in this sort;?And list not seek to break, to quench, to heal,?The bond, the flame, the wound that festereth so,?By knife, by liquor, or by salve to deal;?So much I please to perish in my woe.?Yet lest long travails be above my strength,?Good Delia, loose, quench, heal me, now at length!
XV
If that a loyal heart and faith unfeigned,?If a sweet languish with a chaste desire,?If hunger-starven thoughts so long retained,?Fed but with smoke, and cherished but with fire;?And if a brow with care's char��cters painted?Bewray my love with broken words half spoken?To her which sits in my thoughts' temple sainted,?And lays to view my vulture-gnawn heart open;?If I have done due homage to her eyes,?And had my sighs still tending on her name,?If on her love my life and honour lies,?And she, th'unkindest maid, still scorns the same;?Let this suffice, that all the world may see?The fault is hers, though mine the hurt must be.
XVI
Happy in sleep, waking content to languish,?Embracing clouds by night, in daytime mourn,?My joys but shadows, touch of truth my anguish,?Griefs ever springing, comforts never born;?And still expecting when she will relent,?Grown hoarse with crying, "mercy, mercy give,"?So many vows and prayers having spent?That weary of my life I loathe to live;?And yet the hydra of my cares renews?Still new-born sorrows of her fresh disdain;?And still my hope the summer winds pursues,?Finding no end nor period of my pain;?This is my state, my griefs do touch so nearly,?And thus I live because I love her dearly.
XVII
Why should I sing in verse? Why should I frame?These sad neglected notes for her dear sake??Why should I offer up unto her name,?The sweetest sacrifice my youth can make??Why should I strive to make her live for ever,?That never deigns to give me joy to live??Why should m'afflicted Muse so much endeavour?Such honour unto cruelty to give??If her defects have purchased her this fame,?What should her virtues do, her smiles, her love??If this her worst, how should her best inflame??What passions would her milder favours move??Favours, I think, would sense quite overcome;?And that makes happy lovers ever dumb.
XVIII
Since the first look that led me to this error,?To this thoughts' maze to my confusion tending,?Still have I lived in grief, in hope, in terror,?The circle of my sorrows never ending;?Yet cannot leave her love that holds me hateful;?Her eyes exact it, though her heart disdains me.?See what reward he hath that serves th'ungrateful??So true and loyal love no favour gains me.?Still must I whet my young desires abated,?Upon the flint of such a heart rebelling;?And all in vain; her pride is so innated,?She yields no place at all for pity's dwelling.?Oft have I told her that