THE FIFTH DECADE
I
Ay me, poor wretch, my prayer is turned to sin!
I say, "I love!" My mistress says "'Tis lust!"
Thus most we lose where most we seek to win.
Wit will make wicked what is ne'er so just.
And yet I can supplant her false surmise.
Lust is a fire that for an hour or twain
Giveth a scorching blaze and then he dies;
Love a continual furnace doth maintain.
A furnace! Well, this a furnace may be called;
For it burns inward, yields a smothering flame,
Sighs which, like boiled lead's smoking vapour, scald.
I sigh apace at echo of sighs' name.
Long have I served; no short blaze is my love.
Hid joys there are that maids scorn till they prove.
II
I do not now complain of my disgrace,
O cruel fair one! fair with cruel crost;
Nor of the hour, season, time, nor place;
Nor of my foil, for any freedom lost;
Nor of my courage, by misfortune daunted;
Nor of my wit, by overweening struck;
Nor of my sense, by any sound enchanted;
Nor of the force of fiery-pointed hook;
Nor of the steel that sticks within my wound;
Nor of my thoughts, by worser thoughts defaced;
Nor of the life I labour to confound.
But I complain, that being thus disgraced,
Fired, feared, frantic, fettered, shot through, slain,
My death is such as I may not complain.
III
If ever sorrow spoke from soul that loves,
As speaks a spirit in a man possest,
In me her spirit speaks. My soul it moves,
Whose sigh-swoll'n words breed whirlwinds in my breast;
Or like the echo of a passing bell,
Which sounding on the water seems to howl;
So rings my heart a fearful heavy knell,
And keeps all night in consort with the owl.
My cheeks with a thin ice of tears are clad,
Mine eyes like morning stars are bleared and red.
What resteth then but I be raging mad,
To see that she, my cares' chief conduit-head,
When all streams else help quench my burning heart,
Shuts up her springs and will no grace impart.