Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles | Page 8

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, or lasses.
DAMON
Did not thine age yield warrantise, old man,?Impatience would enforce me to offend thee;?Me list not now thy forward skill to scan,?Yet will I pray that love may mend or end thee.?Spring flowers, sea-tides, earth, grass, sky, stars shall banish, Before the thoughts of love or Phillis vanish.
So get thee gone, and fold thy tender sheep,?For lo, the great automaton of day?In Isis stream his golden locks doth steep;?Sad even her dusky mantle doth display;?Light-flying fowls, the posts of night, disport them, And cheerful-looking vesper doth consort them.
Come you, my careful flock, forego you master,?I'll fold you up and after fall a-sighing;?Words have no worth my secret wounds to plaster;?Naught may