Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles: Idea, Fidesa and Chloris by Michael Drayton;William Smith;Bartholomew Griffin
page 31 of 119 (26%)
page 31 of 119 (26%)
|
Elizium is too high a seat for me,
I will not come in Styx or Phlegethon, The thrice-three Muses but too wanton be, Like they that lust, I care not, I will none. Spiteful Erinnys frights me with her looks, My manhood dares not with foul Ate mell, I quake to look on Hecate's charming books, I still fear bugbears in Apollo's cell. I pass not for Minerva, nor Astrea, Only I call on my divine Idea! XL My heart the anvil where my thoughts do beat, My words the hammers fashioning my desire, My breast the forge including all the heat, Love is the fuel which maintains the fire; My sighs the bellows which the flame increaseth, Filling mine ears with noise and nightly groaning; Toiling with pain, my labour never ceaseth, In grievous passions my woes still bemoaning; My eyes with tears against the fire striving, Whose scorching gleed my heart to cinders turneth; But with those drops the flame again reviving, Still more and more it to my torment burneth, With Sisyphus thus do I roll the stone, And turn the wheel with damnèd Ixion. |
|