inestimable weigh her,
And that's the cause I now lament me so.
Yet not for her contempt do I complain me:
Complaints may ease the mind, but that is all;
Therefore though she too constantly disdain me,
I can but sigh and grieve, and so I shall.
Yet grieve I not because I must grieve ever;
And yet, alas, waste tears away, in vain;
I am resolved truly to persever,
Though she persisteth in her old disdain.
But that which grieves me most is that I see
Those which most fair, the most unkindest be.

VI

Thus long imposed to everlasting plaining,
Divinely constant to the worthiest fair,
And moved by eternally disdaining,
Aye to persever in unkind despair:
Because now silence wearily confined
In tedious dying and a dumb restraint,
Breaks forth in tears from mine unable mind
To ease her passion by a poor complaint;
O do not therefore to thyself suggest
That I can grieve to have immured so long
Upon the matter of mine own unrest;
Such grief is not the tenour of my song,
That 'bide so zealously so bad a wrong.
My grief is this; unless I speak and plain me,
Thou wilt persever ever to disdain me.

VII

Thou wilt persever ever to disdain me;
And I shall then die, when thou will repent it.
O do not therefore from complaint restrain me,
And take my life from me, to me that lent it!
For whilst these accents, weepingly exprest
In humble lines of reverentest zeal,
Have issue to complaint from mine unrest,
They but thy beauty's wonder shall reveal;
And though the grieved muse of some other lover,
Whose less devotions knew but woes like mine,
Would rather seek occasion to discover
How little pitiful and how much unkind,
They other not so worthy beauties find.
O, I not so! but seek with humble prayer,
Means how to move th' unmercifullest fair.

VIII

As draws the golden meteor of the day
Exhaled matter from the ground to heaven,
And by his secret nature, there to stay
The thing fast held, and yet of hold bereaven;
So by th' attractive excellence and might,
Born to the power of thy transparent eyes,
Drawn from myself, ravished with thy delight,
Whose dumb conceits divinely sirenise,
Lo, in suspense of fear and hope upholden,
Diversely poised with