My mind had wounds, I dare not say deceit,
Were I resolved her promise was not just.

Sorrow was my revenge and woe my hate;
I powerless was to alter my desire;
My love is not of time or bound to date;

My heart's internal heat and living fire

Would not, or could, be quenched with sudden showers;

My bound respect was not confined to days; My vowed faith not set to ended hours;

I love the bearing and not bearing sprays

Which now to others do their sweetness send; The incarnate, snow-driven white, and purest

azure,

Who from high heaven doth on their fields descend, Filling their barns with grain, and towers with

treasure.

Erring or never erring, such is love

As, while it lasteth, scorns the account of those Seeking but self-contentment to improve,

And hides, if any be, his inward woes,

And will not know, while he knows his own passion, The often and unjust perseverance

In deeds of love and state,

and every action

From that first day and year of their joy's entrance.

But I, unblessed and ill-born creature,

That did embrace the dust her body bearing, That loved her, both by fancy and by nature, That drew, even with the milk in my first sucking,

Affection from the parent's breast that bare me, Have found her as a stranger so severe, Improving my mishap in each degree ;

But love was gone: so would I my life were!

A queen she was to me, no more Belphœbe;
A lion then, no more a milk-white dove;
A prisoner in her breast I could not be ;—
She did untie the gentle chains of love.

All trespass and mischance for her own glory:
It had been such; it was still for the elect;
But I must be the example in love's story;
This was of all forepast the sad effect.

But thou, my weary soul and heavy thought,
Made by her love a burthen to my being,
Dost know my error never was forethought,
Or ever could proceed from sense of loving.

Of other cause if then it had proceeding,

I leave the excuse, sith judgment hath been given;

The limbs divided, sundered, and ableeding,
Cannot complain the sentence was uneven.

This did that nature's wonder, virtue's choice,
The only paragon of time's begetting,
Divine in words, angelical in voice,

That spring of joys, that flower of love's own setting,

The idea remaining of those golden ages,

That beauty, braving heavens and earth embalming,

Which after worthless worlds but play on stages, Such didst thou her long since describe, yet sighing

That thy unable spirit could not find aught,
In heaven's beauties or in earth's delight,
For likeness fit to satisfy thy thought:

But what hath it availed thee so to write?

She cares not for thy praise, who knows not theirs ;
It's now an idle labour, and a tale

Told out of time, that dulls the hearer's ears;
A merchandize 'whereof there is no sale.

Leave them, or lay them up with thy despairs!
She hath resolved, and judged thee long ago.
Thy lines are now a murmuring to her ears,
Like to a falling stream, which, passing slow,
Is wont to nourish sleep and quietness;

So shall thy painful labours be perused, And draw on rest, which sometime had regard; But those her cares thy errors have excused. Thy days fordone have had their day's reward; So her hard heart, so her estranged mind, In which above the heavens I once reposed; So to thy error have her ears inclined, And have forgotten all thy past deserving, Holding in mind but only thine offence; And only now affecteth thy depraving,

And thinks all vain that pleadeth thy defence.

Yet greater fancy beauty never bred;

A more desire the heart-blood never nourished; Her sweetness an affection never fed,

Which more in any age hath ever flourished. The mind and virtue never have begotten

A firmer love, since love on earth had power; A love obscured, but cannot be forgotten;

Too great and strong for time's jaws to devour ;
Containing such a faith as ages wound not,
Care, wakeful ever of her good estate,
Fear, dreading loss, which sighs and joys not,
A memory of the joys her grace begat;

A lasting gratefulness for those comforts past,
Of which the cordial sweetness cannot die;
These thoughts, knit up by faith, shall ever last;
These time assays, but never can untie,

Whose life once lived in her pearl-like breast,
Whose joys were drawn but from her happiness,
Whose heart's high pleasure, and whose mind's
true rest,

Proceeded from her fortune's blessedness;

Who was intentive, wakeful, and dismayed
In fears, in dreams, in feverous jealousy,
Who long in silence served, and obeyed
With secret heart and hidden loyalty,

Which never change to sad adversity,
Which never age, or nature's overthrow,
Which never sickness or deformity,

Which never wasting care or wearing woe,
If subject unto these she could have been,-

Which never words or wits malicious,

Which never honour's bait, or world's fame, Achieved by attempts adventurous,

Or aught beneath the sun or heaven's frame

Can so dissolve, dissever, or destroy

The essential love of no frail parts compounded, Though of the same now buried be the joy,

The hope, the comfort, and the sweetness ended,

But that the thoughts and memories of these
Work a relapse of passion, and remain
Of my sad heart the sorrow-sucking bees;

The wrongs received, the frowns persuade in vain.

And though these medicines work desire to end,
And are in others the true cure of liking,
The salves that heal love's wounds, and do amend
Consuming woe, and slake our hearty sighing,

They work not so in thy mind's long decease;
External fancy time alone recureth:

All whose effects do wear away with ease

Love of delight, while such delight endureth ; Stays by the pleasure, but no longer stays .

But in my mind so is her love inclosed,
And is thereof not only the best part,

But into it the essence is disposed:

Oh love! (the more my woe) to it thou art

Even as the moisture in each plant that grows;
Even as the sun unto the frozen ground;
Even as the sweetness to the incarnate rose ;
Even as the centre in each perfect round: