Why do I speak of joy or write of love,
    When my heart is the very den of horror,
    And in my soul the pains of hell I prove,
    With all his torments and infernal terror? 
      What should I say? what yet remains to do? 
    My brain is dry with weeping all too long;
    My sighs be spent in utt’ring of my woe,
    And I want words wherewith to tell my wrong. 
      But still distracted in love’s lunacy,
    And bedlam-like thus raving in my grief,
    Now rail upon her hair, then on her eye,
    Now call her goddess, then I call her thief;
      Now I deny her, then I do confess her,
      Now do I curse her, then again I bless her.

    XLII

    Some men there be which like my method well,
      And much commend the strangeness of my vein;
      Some say I have a passing pleasing strain,
    Some say that in my humour I excel. 
    Some who not kindly relish my conceit,
      They say, as poets do, I use to feign,
      And in bare words paint out by passions’ pain. 
    Thus sundry men their sundry minds repeat. 
    I pass not, I, how men affected be,
      Nor who commends or discommends my verse! 
      It pleaseth me if I my woes rehearse,
    And in my lines if she my love may see. 
      Only my comfort still consists in this,
      Writing her praise I cannot write amiss.

    XLIII

    Why should your fair eyes with such sov’reign grace
    Disperse their rays on every vulgar spirit,
    Whilst I in darkness in the self-same place,
    Get not one glance to recompense my merit? 
      So doth the plowman gaze the wand’ring star,
    And only rest contented with the light,
    That never learned what constellations are,
    Beyond the bent of his unknowing sight. 
      O why should beauty, custom to obey,
    To their gross sense apply herself so ill! 
    Would God I were as ignorant as they,
    When I am made unhappy by my skill,
      Only compelled on this poor good to boast! 
      Heavens are not kind to them that know them most.

    XLIV

    Whilst thus my pen strives to eternise thee,
    Age rules my lines with wrinkles in my face,
    Where in the map of all my misery
    Is modelled out the world of my disgrace;
      Whilst in despite of tyrannising times,
    Medea-like, I make thee young again,
    Proudly thou scorn’st my world-outwearing rhymes,
    And murther’st virtue with thy coy disdain;
      And though in youth my youth untimely perish,
    To keep thee from oblivion and the grave,
    Ensuing ages yet my rhymes shall cherish,
    Where I intombed my better part shall save;
      And though this earthly body fade and die,
      My name shall mount upon eternity.

    XLV