rust wasteth treasure.
On earth but love there is no other pleasure.

THE FIFTH DECADE

I

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 twain
Giveth 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.

II

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.

III

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.

IV

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 dea