WHEREIN HE EXPATIATES UPON LOVE AND JEALOUSY

Capricious Love now locks the heart in frost,
Now fills the marrow of the heart with fire,
Until we cannot say if hope inspire,
Or fear; if flame has won or ice has lost.
In June I quake and chatter, and am tossed
With flame in mid-December, torn entire
With jealousy, or thrilled with sweet desire,
As if she cloaked some rival to my cost.
But my sick heat consumes me day and night
The more as being all my own; nor thought
Nor poet's tongue can grasp the grim delight

WHEREIN HE URGES UPON A FRIEND THAT MEEKNESS WHICH IS THE ONLY ARMOUR AGAINST LOVE'S GORGON LOOK

When my sweet foe, so often barricaded
In tall contempt, incites me past controlling,
One solace is vouchsafed, one sure consoling,
One strength alone by which my soul is aided:
Wherever her eyes — which would leave my life shaded
In utter darkness — in red anger rolling,
Meet mine, such true humility, such cajoling
Replies, their wrath to meekness is persuaded.
Ah, were it otherwise, less could I dare
To gaze on her than on Medusa's rings

WHEREIN LOVE'S SLAVE REMEMBERS

That time and place loom like a promontory
Which marked me manacled and branded so,
Love's hand upon my wrists and the bright blow
Of branding irons that made my pain a glory.
My heart, packed with his flame, like the soft fury
Of those dull moans my ears, my heart well know,
Is so ablaze, its very torments glow:
On these I live, my bitter golden story.
That single sun which burst upon my sight,
Burns with his blinding shafts my soul still taken

HUNGER FOR HER IS PREFERABLE TO HAPPINESS WITH ANOTHER

Ill-starred was I the morning I was born
(If that the constellations have such sway),
Hard was the cradle where I cried that day
And hard the earth by my young footsteps worn;
But harder still, the Lady whose bright scorn
With savage Love conspiring struck dismay
Into my heart... Her eyes, and only they,
Can cure the wound... Her eyes still find me torn.
O cruel Love, thou art, if anything,
More kind: for she, indifferent to the flame
That eats apace, regrets the arrow's sting,

WHEREIN HE TREATS OF LOVE IN EXTREMIS

Remarking in those orbs the orb of light
Where Love serenely rules that agitates
My own, the sick heart quits the soul's dim gates
Once more upon her paradisal flight;
Perceiving, then, how bitter-sweet her plight,
And the world-tangling web which she creates,
She sighs for thwarted love and hesitates,
Recalling the curb's tooth, the fanged spur's bite.
By these two mixed irreconcilables she,
With frozen or with fiery wishes filled,
Stands torn forever in a blind dispute:

WHEREIN EXCESS OF LOVE SILENCES HIS PURPOSE TO SPEAK

Often, when to my fancy her dear face
The colour of compassion took, I strove
With eloquent tears, with courteous speech to move
My stubborn angel in this piteous case:
But let swift anger for a flash displace
Her pity — and my hopes are vain thereof:
My life, death, good and ill by sovereign Love
Are trusted to her mercy and her grace.
Wherefore, whenever my mouth is moved to speak,
I scarce can bear the burden I proclaim,
By passion rendered timorous and weak.

WHEREIN EXCESS OF LOVE LOCKS HIS TONGUE

Filled with a thought whose beauty makes me shun
My kind and wander in the world alone,
I now and then must roll away the stone,
Pursuing her from whom I ought to run;
And see her pass, O sweet, O cruel one!
And my soul flutters and is almost flown,
And falls back, such armed sighs about her moan,
Love's dear antagonist... I am undone...
Be still, my heart! Do I not see beneath
Her proud and pitiless forehead one mild beam
Of mercy, almost thawing my heart's death?

WHEREIN HIS LADY SINGS

If Love her lovely eyes to earth compel,
And in a sigh resolving all her soul,
Permit the music of her voice to roll
Heavenward like a soft angelic bell,
My heart, divorced so sweetly from its shell,
(New thoughts, new wishes roused beyond control)
" O Heaven, " it cries, " grant me this golden dole,
That, listening, Death may ravish me as well! "
But ah, the sense enchanted in that mesh
Melodious, the will inflamed to hear
More and yet more of Heaven so wildly near,

WHEREIN HE ENVIES WHATSOEVER OF LOVELY IN NATURE HER PRESENCE MAKES LOVELIER

O rich and happy flowers forever apart
On which my pensive Lady puts her heel!
O golden acres privileged to feel
Her phrase, her footprint pressed upon your heart!
Trees silver green with April's earliest art;
Pale passionate violets; dark grove that can steal
Only so much of sun as may reveal
Your swarthy steeples in a radiant dart!
O comely landscape! O translucent stream
Mirroring her pure face, her intense eyes
And seizing all alive their bluest beam!

WHEREIN HER IMAGE IS FIXED FOREVER IN HIS HEART

Wherever I rest or turn my tired eyes
To cool them of desires that draw them still,
Love paints the lovely Lady at his will
That passion may stay green; and, being wise,
Deep pity with sweet anguish Love applies —
For generous ardours gentle bosoms fill —
While, equally constrained, my fond ears thrill
To her soft syllables, her seraph sighs.
Love and pure Truth were both in league to tell
The virtues without fellows on this sphere,
Whose equals never charmed the stars; nor fell