Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles: Idea, Fidesa and Chloris by Michael Drayton;William Smith;Bartholomew Griffin
page 50 of 119 (42%)
Both at one birth, and up with her did grow.
Beauty still foe to chastity was sworn,
And chastity sworn to be beauty's foe;
And yet when I lay siege unto her heart,
Beauty and chastity both take her part.


V

Arraigned, poor captive at the bar I stand,
The bar of beauty, bar to all my joys;
And up I hold my ever trembling hand,
Wishing or life or death to end annoys.
And when the judge doth question of the guilt,
And bids me speak, then sorrow shuts up words.
Yea, though he say, "Speak boldly what thou wilt!"
Yet my confused affects no speech affords,
For why? Alas, my passions have no bound,
For fear of death that penetrates so near;
And still one grief another doth confound,
Yet doth at length a way to speech appear.
Then, for I speak too late, the Judge doth give
His sentence that in prison I shall live.


VI

Unhappy sentence, worst of worst of pains,
To be in darksome silence, out of ken,
Banished from all that bliss the world contains,
DigitalOcean Referral Badge