23.07.2007, 09:07
II
FAIR dog, which so my heart dost tear asunder,
That my life's-blood, my bowels, overfloweth,
Alas, what wicked rage conceal'st thou under
These sweet enticing joys, thy forehead showeth?
Me, whom the light-wing'd god of long hath chas'd,
Thou hast attain'd, thou gav'st that fatal wound,
Which my soul's peaceful innocence hath raz'd,
And reason to her servant humor bound.
Kill therefore in the end, and end my anguish,
Give me my death, methinks even time upbraideth
A fullness of the woes, wherein I languish;
Or if thou wilt I live, then pity pleadeth
Help out of thee, since nature hath reveal'd,
That with thy tongue thy bitings may be heal'd.
12
Cupid, thou naughty boy, when thou wert loathed,
Naked and blind, for vagabonding noted,
Thy nakedness I in my reason clothed,
Mine eyes I gave thee, so was I devoted.
Fie, wanton, fie! who would show children kindness?
No sooner he into mine eyes was gotten
But straight he clouds them with a seeing blindness,
Makes reason wish that reason were forgotten.
From thence to Myra's eyes the wanton strayeth,
Where while I charge him with ungrateful measure,
So with fair wonders he mine eyes betrayeth,
That my wounds and his wrongs become my pleasure;
Till for more spite to Myra's heart he flyeth,
Where living to the world, to me he dieth.
16
Fie, foolish earth, think you the heaven wants glory
Because your shadows do yourself benight?
All's dark unto the blind, let them be sorry;
But love still in herself finds her delight.
Fie, fond desire, think you that love wants glory
Because your shadows do yourself benight?
The hopes and fears of lust may make men sorry,
The heavens in themselves are ever bright.
Then earth, stand fast, the sky that you benight
Will turn again and so restore your glory;
Desire, be steady, hope is your delight,
An orb wherein no creature can be sorry,
Love being placed above these middle regions
Where every passion wars itself with legions.
SONNET XVII.
CYNTHIA, whose glories are at full forever,
Whose beauties draw forth tears, and kindle fires,
Fires, which kindled once are quenchèd never :
So beyond hope your worth bears up desires.
Why cast you clouds on your sweet-looking eyes?
Are you afraid, they show me too much pleasure?
Strong Nature decks the grave wherein it lies,
Excellence can never be expressed in measure.
Are you afraid because my heart adores you,
The world will think I hold Endymion's place?
Hippolytus, sweet Cynthia, kneeled before you ;
Yet did you not come down to kiss his face.
Angels enjoy the Heaven's inward choirs :
Star-gazers only multiply desires.
SONNET XXV
Cupid, my pretty boy, leave off thy crying,
Thou shalt have bells or apples, be not peevish ;
Kiss me, sweet lad ; beshrew her for denying ;
Such rude denials do make children thievish.
Did Reason say that boys must be restrain'd?
What was it, tell ; hath cruel Honour chidden ?
Or would they have thee from sweet Myra wean'd ?
Are her fair breasts made dainty to be hidden ?
Tell me—sweet boy—doth Myra's beauty threaten ?
Must you say grace when you would be a-playing?
Doth she cause thee make faults, to make thee beaten ?
Is Beauty's pride in innocent's betraying ?
Give me a bow, let me thy quiver borrow,
And she shall play the child with Love or Sorrow.
Sonnet XXXIX
The nurse-life Wheat within his greene huske growing,
Flatters our hope and tickles our desire,
Natures true riches in sweet beauties shewing,
Which set all hearts, with labours love, on fire.
No lesse faire is the Wheat when golden eare
Showes unto hope the joyes of neare enjoying:
Faire and sweet is the bud, more sweet and faire
The Rose, which proves that time is not destroying.
Caelica, your youth, the morning of delight,
Enamel'd o're with beauties white and red,
All sense and thoughts did to beleefe invite,
That Love and Glorie there are brought to bed;
And your ripe yeeres love-noone (he goes no higher)
Turnes all the spirits of Man into desire.
Sonnet XXXXIII
Cælica, when you look down into your heart,
And see what wrongs my faith endureth there,
Hearing the groans of true love, loath to part,
You think they witness of your changes bear.
And as the man that by ill neighbors dwells,
Whose curious eyes discern those works of shame,
Which busy rumor to these people tells,
Suffers for seeing those dark springs of fame.
So I, because I cannot choose but know
How constantly you have forgotten me,
Because my faith doth like the sea-marks show,
And tell the strangers where the dangers be,
I, like the child, whom nurse hath overthrown,
Not crying, yet am whipped, if you be known.
SONNET LXXXV.
Farewell, sweet boy, complain not of my truth ;
Thy mother loved thee not with more devotion ;
For to thy boy's play I gave all my youth :
Young Master, I did hope for your promotion.
While some sought honours, princes' thoughts observing ;
Many woo'd Fame, the child of pain and anguish,
Others judged inward good a chief deserving ;
I in thy wanton visions joyed to languish.
I bowed not to the image for succession,
Nor bound thy bow to shoot reformèd kindness ;
Thy plays of hope and fear were my confession,
The spectacles to my life was thy blindness :
But Cupid now farewell, I will go play me,
With thoughts that please me less, and less betray me.
SONNET LXXXVII.
FORSAKE THYSELF, TO HEAVEN TURN THEE.
THE earth, with thunder torn, with fire blasted,
With waters drowned, with windy palsy shaken,
Cannot for this with heaven be distasted,
Since thunder, rain, and winds from earth are taken.
Man, torn with love, with inward furies blasted,
Drowned with despair, with fleshly lustings shaken,
Cannot for this with heaven be distasted :
Love, fury, lustings out of man are taken.
Then man, endure thyself, those clouds will vanish.
Life is a top which whipping Sorrow driveth,
Wisdom must bear what our flesh cannot banish,
The humble lead, the stubborn bootless striveth :
Or, man, forsake thyself, to heaven turn thee,
Her flames enlighten nature, never burn thee.
SONNET CI.
IN night when colours all to black are cast,
Distinction lost, or gone down with the light ;
The eye a watch to inward senses plac'd,
Not seeing, yet still having power of sight,
Gives vain alarums to the inward sense,
Where fear stirr'd up with witty tyranny,
Confounds all powers, and thorough self-offence
Doth forge and raise impossibility ;
Such as in thick-depriving darkness
Proper reflections of the error be ;
And images of self-confusedness,
Which hurt imaginations only see,
And from this nothing seen, tells news of devils ;
Which but expressions be of inward evils.
Sonnet CIV
O false and treacherous Probability,
Enemy of truth, and friend to wickednesse;
With whose bleare eyes opinion learnes to see
Truths feeble party here, and barrennesse.
When thou hast thus misled Humanity,
And lost obedience in the pride of wit,
With reason dar'st thou judge the Deity,
And in thy flesh make bold to fashion it.
Vaine thoght, the word of Power a riddle is,
And till the vayles be rent, the flesh newborne,
Reveales no wonders of that inward blisse,
Which but where faith is, every where findes scorne;
Who therfore censures God with fleshly sp'rit,
As well in time may wrap up infinite
FAIR dog, which so my heart dost tear asunder,
That my life's-blood, my bowels, overfloweth,
Alas, what wicked rage conceal'st thou under
These sweet enticing joys, thy forehead showeth?
Me, whom the light-wing'd god of long hath chas'd,
Thou hast attain'd, thou gav'st that fatal wound,
Which my soul's peaceful innocence hath raz'd,
And reason to her servant humor bound.
Kill therefore in the end, and end my anguish,
Give me my death, methinks even time upbraideth
A fullness of the woes, wherein I languish;
Or if thou wilt I live, then pity pleadeth
Help out of thee, since nature hath reveal'd,
That with thy tongue thy bitings may be heal'd.
12
Cupid, thou naughty boy, when thou wert loathed,
Naked and blind, for vagabonding noted,
Thy nakedness I in my reason clothed,
Mine eyes I gave thee, so was I devoted.
Fie, wanton, fie! who would show children kindness?
No sooner he into mine eyes was gotten
But straight he clouds them with a seeing blindness,
Makes reason wish that reason were forgotten.
From thence to Myra's eyes the wanton strayeth,
Where while I charge him with ungrateful measure,
So with fair wonders he mine eyes betrayeth,
That my wounds and his wrongs become my pleasure;
Till for more spite to Myra's heart he flyeth,
Where living to the world, to me he dieth.
16
Fie, foolish earth, think you the heaven wants glory
Because your shadows do yourself benight?
All's dark unto the blind, let them be sorry;
But love still in herself finds her delight.
Fie, fond desire, think you that love wants glory
Because your shadows do yourself benight?
The hopes and fears of lust may make men sorry,
The heavens in themselves are ever bright.
Then earth, stand fast, the sky that you benight
Will turn again and so restore your glory;
Desire, be steady, hope is your delight,
An orb wherein no creature can be sorry,
Love being placed above these middle regions
Where every passion wars itself with legions.
SONNET XVII.
CYNTHIA, whose glories are at full forever,
Whose beauties draw forth tears, and kindle fires,
Fires, which kindled once are quenchèd never :
So beyond hope your worth bears up desires.
Why cast you clouds on your sweet-looking eyes?
Are you afraid, they show me too much pleasure?
Strong Nature decks the grave wherein it lies,
Excellence can never be expressed in measure.
Are you afraid because my heart adores you,
The world will think I hold Endymion's place?
Hippolytus, sweet Cynthia, kneeled before you ;
Yet did you not come down to kiss his face.
Angels enjoy the Heaven's inward choirs :
Star-gazers only multiply desires.
SONNET XXV
Cupid, my pretty boy, leave off thy crying,
Thou shalt have bells or apples, be not peevish ;
Kiss me, sweet lad ; beshrew her for denying ;
Such rude denials do make children thievish.
Did Reason say that boys must be restrain'd?
What was it, tell ; hath cruel Honour chidden ?
Or would they have thee from sweet Myra wean'd ?
Are her fair breasts made dainty to be hidden ?
Tell me—sweet boy—doth Myra's beauty threaten ?
Must you say grace when you would be a-playing?
Doth she cause thee make faults, to make thee beaten ?
Is Beauty's pride in innocent's betraying ?
Give me a bow, let me thy quiver borrow,
And she shall play the child with Love or Sorrow.
Sonnet XXXIX
The nurse-life Wheat within his greene huske growing,
Flatters our hope and tickles our desire,
Natures true riches in sweet beauties shewing,
Which set all hearts, with labours love, on fire.
No lesse faire is the Wheat when golden eare
Showes unto hope the joyes of neare enjoying:
Faire and sweet is the bud, more sweet and faire
The Rose, which proves that time is not destroying.
Caelica, your youth, the morning of delight,
Enamel'd o're with beauties white and red,
All sense and thoughts did to beleefe invite,
That Love and Glorie there are brought to bed;
And your ripe yeeres love-noone (he goes no higher)
Turnes all the spirits of Man into desire.
Sonnet XXXXIII
Cælica, when you look down into your heart,
And see what wrongs my faith endureth there,
Hearing the groans of true love, loath to part,
You think they witness of your changes bear.
And as the man that by ill neighbors dwells,
Whose curious eyes discern those works of shame,
Which busy rumor to these people tells,
Suffers for seeing those dark springs of fame.
So I, because I cannot choose but know
How constantly you have forgotten me,
Because my faith doth like the sea-marks show,
And tell the strangers where the dangers be,
I, like the child, whom nurse hath overthrown,
Not crying, yet am whipped, if you be known.
SONNET LXXXV.
Farewell, sweet boy, complain not of my truth ;
Thy mother loved thee not with more devotion ;
For to thy boy's play I gave all my youth :
Young Master, I did hope for your promotion.
While some sought honours, princes' thoughts observing ;
Many woo'd Fame, the child of pain and anguish,
Others judged inward good a chief deserving ;
I in thy wanton visions joyed to languish.
I bowed not to the image for succession,
Nor bound thy bow to shoot reformèd kindness ;
Thy plays of hope and fear were my confession,
The spectacles to my life was thy blindness :
But Cupid now farewell, I will go play me,
With thoughts that please me less, and less betray me.
SONNET LXXXVII.
FORSAKE THYSELF, TO HEAVEN TURN THEE.
THE earth, with thunder torn, with fire blasted,
With waters drowned, with windy palsy shaken,
Cannot for this with heaven be distasted,
Since thunder, rain, and winds from earth are taken.
Man, torn with love, with inward furies blasted,
Drowned with despair, with fleshly lustings shaken,
Cannot for this with heaven be distasted :
Love, fury, lustings out of man are taken.
Then man, endure thyself, those clouds will vanish.
Life is a top which whipping Sorrow driveth,
Wisdom must bear what our flesh cannot banish,
The humble lead, the stubborn bootless striveth :
Or, man, forsake thyself, to heaven turn thee,
Her flames enlighten nature, never burn thee.
SONNET CI.
IN night when colours all to black are cast,
Distinction lost, or gone down with the light ;
The eye a watch to inward senses plac'd,
Not seeing, yet still having power of sight,
Gives vain alarums to the inward sense,
Where fear stirr'd up with witty tyranny,
Confounds all powers, and thorough self-offence
Doth forge and raise impossibility ;
Such as in thick-depriving darkness
Proper reflections of the error be ;
And images of self-confusedness,
Which hurt imaginations only see,
And from this nothing seen, tells news of devils ;
Which but expressions be of inward evils.
Sonnet CIV
O false and treacherous Probability,
Enemy of truth, and friend to wickednesse;
With whose bleare eyes opinion learnes to see
Truths feeble party here, and barrennesse.
When thou hast thus misled Humanity,
And lost obedience in the pride of wit,
With reason dar'st thou judge the Deity,
And in thy flesh make bold to fashion it.
Vaine thoght, the word of Power a riddle is,
And till the vayles be rent, the flesh newborne,
Reveales no wonders of that inward blisse,
Which but where faith is, every where findes scorne;
Who therfore censures God with fleshly sp'rit,
As well in time may wrap up infinite