Twelve years entire I wasted in this war;

Twelve years of my most happy younger days;

But I in them, and they now wasted are:

"Of all which past, the sorrow only stays."

So wrote I once, and my mishap foretold,

My mind still feeling sorrowful success; Even as before a storm the marble cold

Doth by moist tears tempestuous times express,

So felt my heavy mind my harms at hand

Which my vain thought in vain sought to recure :

At middle day my sun seemed under land,

When any little cloud did it obscure.

And as the icicles in a winter's day,

Whenas the sun shines with unwonted warm,

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So did my joys melt into secret tears;

So did my heart dissolve in wasting drops:

And as the season of the year outwears,

And heaps of snow from off the mountain tops

With sudden streams the valleys overflow,

So did the time draw on my more despair: Then floods of sorrow and whole seas of woe, The banks of all my hope did overbear,

And drowned my mind in depths of misery:

Sometime I died; sometime I was distract,

My soul the stage of fancy's tragedy;

Then furious madness, where true reason lacked,

Wrote what it would, and scourged mine own conceit.
Oh, heavy heart! who can thee witness bear?
What tongue, what pen, could thy tormenting treat,

But thine own mourning thoughts which present were?

What stranger mind believe the meanest part?

What altered sense conceive the weakest woe,

That tare, that rent, that pierced thy sad heart?

And as a man distract, with triple might

Bound in strong chains doth strive and rage in vain,

Till, tired and breathless, he is forced to rest,—

Finds by contention but increase of pain,

And fiery heat inflamed in swollen breast;

So did my mind in change of passion

From woe to wrath, from wrath return to woe, Struggling in vain for love's subjection;

Therefore, all lifeless and all helpless bound,

My fainting spirits sunk, and heart appalled, My joys and hopes lay bleeding on the ground, That not long since the highest heaven scaled.

I hated life and cursed destiny;

The thoughts of passed times, like flames of hell, Kindled afresh within my memory

The many dear achievements that befell.

In those prime years and infancy of love,

Which to describe were but to die in writing;

Ah, those I sought, but vainly, to remove,

And vainly shall, by which I perish living.

And though strong reason hold before mine eyes
The images and forms of worlds past,
Teaching the cause why all those flames that rise
From forms external can no longer last,

Than that those seeming beauties hold in prime
Love's ground, his essence, and his empery,
All slaves to age, and vassals unto time,

Of which repentance writes the tragedy :

But this my heart's desire could not conceive,
Whose love outflew the fastest flying time,
A beauty that can easily deceive

The arrest of years, and creeping age outclimb.

A spring of beauties which time ripeth not-
Time that but works on frail mortality;
A sweetness which woe's wrongs outwipeth not,
Whom love hath chose for his divinity;

A vestal fire that burns but never wasteth,

That loseth nought by giving light to all,

That endless shines each where, and endless lasteth, Blossoms of pride that can nor fade nor fall;

These were those marvellous perfections,

The parents of my sorrow and my envy,

Most deathful and most violent infections;

These be the tyrants that in fetters tie

Their wounded vassals, yet nor kill nor cure,

But glory in their lasting misery

That, as her beauties would, our woes should dure-
These be the effects of powerful empery.

Yet have these wounders want, which want compassion; Yet hath her mind some marks of human race;

Yet will she be a woman for a fashion,

So doth she please her virtues to deface.

And like as that immortal power doth seat
An element of waters, to allay
The fiery sunbeams that on earth do beat,

And temper by cold light the heat of day,

So hath perfection, which begat her mind,
Added thereto a change of fantasy,
And left her the affections of her kind,

Yet free from every evil but cruelty.

But leave her praise; speak thou of nought but woe;
Write on the tale that sorrow bids thee tell ;

Strive to forget, and care no more to know

Thy cares are known, by knowing those too well.

Describe her now as she appears to thee;

Not as she did appear in days fordone :

In love, those things that were no more may be,
For fancy seldom ends where it begun.

And as a stream by strong hand bounded in

From nature's course where it did sometime run,
By some small rent or loose part doth begin
To find escape, till it a way hath won;

Doth then all unawares in sunder tear

The forced bounds, and, raging, run at large In the ancient channels as they wonted were; Such is of women's love the careful charge,

Held and maintained with multitude of woes;
Of long erections such the sudden fall:

One hour diverts, one instant overthrows,

For which our lives, for which our fortune's thrall

So many years those joys have dearly bought;
Of which when our fond hopes do most assure,
All is dissolved; our labours come to nought;

Nor any mark thereof there doth endure:

No more than when small drops of rain do fall
Upon the parched ground by heat updried;
No cooling moisture is perceived at all,

Nor any show or sign of wet doth bide.

But as the fields, clothed with leaves and flowers,
The banks of roses smelling precious sweet,
Have but their beauty's date and timely hours,
And then, defaced by winter's cold and sleet,

So far as neither fruit nor form of flower

Stays for a witness what such branches bare, But as time gave, time did again devour,

And change our rising joy to falling care:

So of affection which our youth presented;

When she that from the sun reaves power and light, Did but decline her beams as discontented,

Converting sweetest days to saddest night,

All droops, all dies, all trodden under dust,

The person, place, and passages forgotten ; The hardest steel eaten with softest rust,

The firm and solid tree both rent and rotten.

Those thoughts, so full of pleasure and content,
That in our absence were affection's food,

Are razed out and from the fancy rent;

In highest grace and heart's dear care that stood,

Are cast for prey to hatred and to scorn,—

Our dearest treasures and our heart's true joys;

The tokens hung on breast and kindly worn,

Are now elsewhere disposed or held for toys.

And those which then our jealousy removed,
And others for our sakes then valued dear,

The one forgot, the rest are dear beloved,

When all of ours doth strange or vild appear.

Those streams seem standing puddles, which before
We saw our beauties in, so were they clear;
Belphoebe's course is now observed no more;

That fair resemblance weareth out of date;

Our ocean seas are but tempestuous waves, And all things base, that blessed were of late

And as a field, wherein the stubble stands

Of harvest past, the ploughman's eye offends; He tills again, or tears them up with hands,

And throws to fire as foiled and fruitless ends,

And takes delight another seed to sow;

So doth the mind root up all wonted thought,

And scorns the care of our remaining woes;

The sorrows, which themselves for us have wrought,

Are burnt to cinders by new kindled fires;
The ashes are dispersed into the air;
The sighs, the groans of all our past desires

Are clean outworn, as things that never were.

With youth is dead the hope of love's return,
Who looks not back to hear our after-cries:
Where he is not, he laughs at those that mourn;
Whence he is gone, he scorns the mind that dies.

When he is absent, he believes no words;

When reason speaks, he, careless, stops his ears; Whom he hath left, he never grace affords,

But bathes his wings in our lamenting tears.

Unlasting passion, soon outworn conceit,

Whereon I built, and on so dureless trust! 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