The Fifth Decade

Ay me, poor wretch, my prayer is turned to sin!I say, "I love!" My mistress says "'Tis lust!"Thus most we lose where most we seek to win.Wit will make wicked what is ne'er so just.And yet I can supplant her false surmise.Lust is a fire that for an hour or twainGiveth a scorching blaze and then he dies;Love a continual furnace doth maintain.A furnace! Well, this a furnace may be called;For it burns inward, yields a smothering flame,Sighs which, like boiled lead's smoking vapour, scald.I sigh apace at echo of sighs' name.Long have I served; no short blaze is my love.Hid joys there are that maids scorn till they prove.

I do not now complain of my disgrace,O cruel fair one! fair with cruel crost;Nor of the hour, season, time, nor place;Nor of my foil, for any freedom lost;Nor of my courage, by misfortune daunted;Nor of my wit, by overweening struck;Nor of my sense, by any sound enchanted;Nor of the force of fiery-pointed hook;Nor of the steel that sticks within my wound;Nor of my thoughts, by worser thoughts defaced;Nor of the life I labour to confound.But I complain, that being thus disgraced,Fired, feared, frantic, fettered, shot through, slain,My death is such as I may not complain.

If ever sorrow spoke from soul that loves,As speaks a spirit in a man possest,In me her spirit speaks. My soul it moves,Whose sigh-swoll'n words breed whirlwinds in my breast;Or like the echo of a passing bell,Which sounding on the water seems to howl;So rings my heart a fearful heavy knell,And keeps all night in consort with the owl.My cheeks with a thin ice of tears are clad,Mine eyes like morning stars are bleared and red.What resteth then but I be raging mad,To see that she, my cares' chief conduit-head,When all streams else help quench my burning heart,Shuts up her springs and will no grace impart.

You secret vales, you solitary fields,You shores forsaken and you sounding rocks!If ever groaning heart hath made you yield,Or words half spoke that sense in prison locks,Then 'mongst night shadows whisper out my death.That when myself hath sealed my lips from speaking,Each tell-tale echo with a weeping breath,May both record my truth and true love's breaking.You pretty flowers that smile for summer's sake,Pull in your heads before my wat'ry eyesDo turn the meadows to a standing lake,By whose untimely floods your glory dies!For lo, mine heart, resolved to moistening air,Feedeth mine eyes which double tear for tear.

His shadow to Narcissus well presented,How fair he was by such attractive love!So if thou would'st thyself thy beauty prove,Vulgar breath-mirrors might have well contented,And to their prayers eternally consented,Oaths, vows and sighs, if they believe might move;But more thou forc'st, making my pen approveThy praise to all, least any had dissented.When this hath wrought, thou which before wert knownBut unto some, of all art now required,And thine eyes' wonders wronged, because not shownThe world, with daily orisons desired.Thy chaste fair gifts, with learning's breath is blown,And thus my pen hath made thy sweets admired.

I am no model figure, or sign of care,But his eternal heart's-consuming essence,In whom grief's commentaries written are,Drawing gross passion into pure quintessence,Not thine eye's fire, but fire of thine eye's disdain,Fed by neglect of my continual grieving,Attracts the true life's spirit of my pain,And gives it thee, which gives me no relieving.Within thine arms sad elegies I sing;Unto thine eyes a true heart love-torn lay I:Thou smell'st from me the savours sorrows bring;My tears to taste my truth to touch display I.Lo thus each sense, dear fair one, I importune;But being care, thou flyest me as ill fortune.

But being care, thou flyest me as ill fortune;--Care the consuming canker of the mind!The discord that disorders sweet hearts' tune!Th' abortive bastard of a coward mind!The lightfoot lackey that runs post by death,Bearing the letters which contain our end!The busy advocate that sells his breath,Denouncing worst to him, is most his friend!O dear, this care no interest holds in me;But holy care, the guardian of thy fair,Thine honour's champion, and thy virtue's fee,The zeal which thee from barbarous times shall bear,This care am I; this care my life hath taken.Dear to my soul, then leave me not forsaken!

Dear to my soul, then, leave, me not forsaken!Fly not! My heart within thy bosom sleepeth;Even from myself and sense I have betakenMe unto thee for whom my spirit weepeth,And on the shore of that salt teary sea,Couched in a bed of unseen seeming pleasure,Where in imaginary thoughts thy fair self lay;But being waked, robbed of my life's best treasure,I call the heavens, air, earth, and seas to hearMy love, my truth, and black disdained estate,Beating the rocks with bellowings of despair,Which still with plaints my words reverberate,Sighing, "Alas, what shall become of me?"Whilst echo cries, "What shall become of me?"

Whilst echo cries, "What shall become of me?"And desolate, my desolations pity,Thou in thy beauty's carack sitt'st to seeMy tragic downfall, and my funeral ditty.No timbrel, but my heart thou play'st upon,Whose strings are stretched unto the highest key;The diapason, love; love is the unison;In love my life and labours waste away.Only regardless to the world thou leav'st me,Whilst slain hopes, turning from the feast of sorrow,Unto despair, their king, which ne'er deceives me,Captives my heart, whose black night hates the morrow,And he in truth of my distressed cryPlants me a weeping star within mine eye.

Prometheus for stealing living fireFrom heaven's king, was judged eternal death;In self-same flame with unrelenting ireBound fast to Caucasus' low foot beneath.So I, for stealing living beauty's fireInto my verse that it may always live,And change his forms to shapes of my desire,Thou beauty's queen, self sentence like dost give.Bound to thy feet in chains of life I lie;For to thine eyes I never dare aspire;And in thy beauty's brightness do I fry,As poor Prometheus in the scalding fire;Which tears maintain as oil the lamp revives;Only my succour in thy favour lies.