When I the hooks of pleasure first devoured,
Which undigested threaten now to choke me,
Fortune on me her golden graces showered;
O then delight did to delight provoke me!
Delight, false instrument of my decay,
Delight, the nothing that doth all things move,
Made me first wander from the perfect way,
And fast entangled me in the snares of love.
Then my unhappy happiness at first began,
Happy in that I loved the fairest fair;
Unhappily despised, a hapless man;
Thus joy did triumph, triumph did despair.
My conquest is—which shall the conquest gain?—
Fidessa, author both of joy and pain!
LI
Work, work apace, you blessed sisters three,
In restless twining of my fatal thread!
O let your nimble hands at once agree,
To weave it out and cut it off with speed!
Then shall my vexèd and tormented ghost
Have quiet passage to the Elysian rest,
And sweetly over death and fortune boast
In everlasting triumphs with the blest.
But ah, too well I know you have conspired
A lingering death for him that loatheth life,
As if with woes he never could be tired.
For this you hide your all-dividing knife.
One comfort yet the heavens have assigned me;
That I must die and leave my griefs behind me.
LII
It is some comfort to the wrongèd man,
The wronger of injustice to upbraid.
Justly myself herein I comfort can,
And justly call her an ungrateful maid.
Thus am I pleased to rid myself of crime
And stop the mouth of all-reporting fame,
Counting my greatest cross the loss of time
And all my private grief her public shame.
Ah, but to speak the truth, hence are my cares,
And in this comfort all discomfort resteth;
My harms I cause her scandal unawares;
Thus love procures the thing that love detesteth.
For he that views the glasses of my smart
Must need report she hath a flinty heart.
LIII
I was a king of sweet content at least,
But now from out my kingdom banished;
I was chief guest at fair dame pleasure's feast,
But now I am for want of succour famished;
I was a saint and heaven was my rest,
But now cast down into the lowest hell.
Vile caitiffs may not live among the blest,
Nor blessed men amongst cursed caitiffs dwell.
Thus am I made an exile of a king;
Thus choice of meats to want of food is changed;
Thus heaven's loss doth hellish torments bring;
Self crosses make me from myself estranged.
Yet am I still the same but made another;
Then not the same; alas, I am no other!
LIV
If great Apollo offered as a dower
His burning throne to beauty's excellence;
If Jove himself came in a golden shower
Down to the earth to fetch fair Io thence;
If Venus in the curlèd locks was tied
Of proud Adonis not of gentle kind;
If Tellus for a shepherd's favour died,
The favour cruel Love to her assigned;
If Heaven's winged herald Hermes had
His heart enchanted with a country maid;
If poor Pygmalion was for beauty mad;
If gods and men have all for beauty strayed:
I am not then ashamed to be included
'Mongst those that love, and be with love deluded.
LV