Think what ye list, I fear not:
For as of me, I am not,
But even as one that recks not
Whether ye hate or hate not:
For in your love I dote not:
Wherefore I pray you forget not,
But love whom ye list, for I care not.
SIR THOMAS WYATT
ENGLISH (C. 1503-1542)
What meaneth this? When I lie alone
What meaneth this? When I lie alone,
I toss, I turn, I sigh, I groan;
My bed me seems as hard as stone:
What meaneth this?
I sigh, I plain continually;
The clothes that on my bed do lie
Always methinks they lie awry:
What meaneth this?
In slumbers oft for fear I quake;
For heat and cold I burn and shake;
For lack of sleep my head doth ache:
What meaneth this?
At mornings then when I do rise
I turn unto my wonted guise;
All day after muse and devise:
What meaneth this?
And if perchance by me there pass
She unto whom I sue for grace,
The cold blood forsaketh my face:
What meaneth this?
But if I sit near her by,
With loud voice my heart doth cry,
And yet my mouth is dumb and dry:
What meaneth this?
To ask for help no heart I have,
My tongue doth fail what I should crave,
Yet inwardly I rage and rave:
What meaneth this?
Thus have I passèd many a year
And many a day, though nought appear
But most of that that most I fear:
What meaneth this?
SIR THOMAS WYATT
ENGLISH (C. 1503-1542)
The Lover Showeth How He Is Forsaken of Such as He Sometime Enjoyed
They flee from me that sometime did me seek
With naked foot stalking in my chamber:
I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek
That now are wild and do not remember
That sometime they put themself in danger
To take bread at my hand; and now they range
Busily seeking with a continual change.
Thanked be fortune, it hath been otherwise
Twenty times better; but once in special,
In thin array after a pleasant guise,
When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,
And she me caught in her arms long and small:
Therewithal sweetly did me kiss,
And softly said, “Dear heart, how like you this?”
It was no dream: I lay broad waking.
But all is turned thorough my gentleness
Into a strange fashion of forsaking;
And I have leave to go of her goodness,
And she also to use new fangleness.
But since that I so kindely am served,
I would fain know what she hath deserved.
SIR THOMAS WYATT
ENGLISH (C. 1503-1542)
To My Lord Biron’s Tune of “Adieu Phillis”
’Tis true, our life is but a long disease,
Made up of real pain and seeming ease;
You stars, who these entangled fortunes give,
O tell me why
It is so hard to die,
Yet such a task to live?
If with some pleasure we our griefs betray,
It costs us dearer than it can repay:
For time or fortune all things so devours;
Our hopes are crossed,
Or else the object lost,
Ere we can call it ours.
KATHERINE PHILIPS
ENGLISH (1631-1664)
And if I did what then
And if I did what then?
Are you aggrieved therefore?
The sea hath fish for every man,
And what would you have more?
Thus did my mistress once
Amaze my mind with doubt:
And popped a question for the nonce
To beat my brains about.
Whereto I thus replied:
Each fisherman can wish
That all the sea at every tide
Were his alone to fish.
And so did I (in vain),
But since it may not be,
Let such fish there as find the gain,
And leave the loss for me.
And with such luck and loss
I will content myself:
Till tides of turning time may toss
Such fishers on the shelf.
And when they stick on sands,
That every man may see,
Then will I laugh and clap my hands
As they do now at me.
GEORGE GASCOIGNE
ENGLISH (C. 1539-1577)
An evil spirit, your beauty haunts me still
An evil spirit, your beauty haunts me still,
Wherewith, alas, I have been long possessed,
Which ceaseth not to tempt me to each ill,
Nor gives me once but one poor minute’s rest;
In me it speaks, whether I sleep or wake,
And when by means to drive it out I try,
With greater torments then it me doth take,
And tortures me in most extremity;
Before my face it lays down my despairs,
And hastes me on unto a sudden death,
Now tempting me to drown myself in tears,
And then in sighing to give up my breath.
Thus am I still provoked to every evil
By this good wicked spirit, sweet angel-devil.
MICHAEL DRAYTON
ENGLISH (1563-1631)
I saw my lady weep
I saw my lady weep,
And Sorrow proud to be advancéd so
In those fair eyes where all perfections keep.
Her face was full of woe,
But such a woe (believe me) as wins more hearts
Than Mirth can do with her enticing parts.
Sorrow was there made fair,
And Passion wise; Tears a delightful thing;
Silence beyond all speech, a wisdom rare;
She made her sighs to sing,
And all things with so sweet a sadness move
As made my heart at once both grieve and love.
O fairer than aught else
The world can show, leave off in time to grieve.
Enough, enough; your joyful look excels:
Tears kill the heart, believe.
O strive not to be excellent in woe,
Which only breeds your beauty’s overthrow.
ANONYMOUS
ENGLISH (C. 1600)
The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
Enjoyed no sooner but despisèd straight;
Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,
Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait,
On purpose laid to make the taker mad:
Mad in pursuit, and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
ENGLISH (1564-1616)
I envy not in any moods
From In Memoriam
I envy not in any moods
The captive void of noble rage,
The linnet born within the cage,
That never knew the summer woods;
I envy not the bea
st that takes
His license in the field of time,
Unfetter’d by the sense of crime,
To whom a conscience never wakes;
Nor, what may count itself as blest,
The heart that never plighted troth
But stagnates in the weeds of sloth;
Nor any want-begotten rest.
I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
’Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
ENGLISH (1809-1892)
Pity Me Not
Pity me not because the light of day
At close of day no longer walks the sky;
Pity me not for beauties passed away
From field and thicket as the year goes by;
Pity me not the waning of the moon,
Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea,
Nor that a man’s desire is hushed so soon,
And you no longer look with love on me.
This have I known always: Love is no more
Than the wide blossom which the wind assails,
Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore,
Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales;
Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
What the swift mind beholds at every turn.
EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
AMERICAN (1892-1950)
the sonnet-ballad
Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?
They took my lover’s tallness off to war.
Left me lamenting. Now I cannot guess
What I can use an empty heart-cup for.
He won’t be coming back here any more.
Some day the war will end, but, oh, I knew
When he went walking grandly out that door
That my sweet love would have to be untrue.
Would have to be untrue. Would have to court
Coquettish death, whose impudent and strange
Possessive arms and beauty (of a sort)
Can make a hard man hesitate—and change.
And he will be the one to stammer, “Yes.”
Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?
GWENDOLYN BROOKS
AMERICAN (1917-2000)
SEPARATIONS AND FAREWELLS
Slim-waisted friend
Slim-waisted friend,
look —
spreading its arch
over Love’s
phantom city,
the faint crescent moon —
where the separate
gazes of lovers
parted to separate
countries meet.
RAJASEKHARA
INDIAN (FL. 880-920)
TRANSLATED BY ANDREW SCHELLING
Thoughts from the Women’s Quarter
To the Tune “The Boat of Stars”
Year after year I have watched
My jade mirror. Now my rouge
And cream sicken me. It is one more
Year that he has not come back.
My flesh shakes when a letter
Comes from South of the river.
I cannot drink wine since he left,
But sorrow has drunk up all my tears.
I have lost my mind, far-off
In the jungle mists of the South.
The gates of Heaven are nearer
Than the body of my beloved.
LI CH’ING-CHAO
CHINESE (1084-C. 1151)
TRANSLATED BY KENNETH REXROTH
Western wind, when will thou blow
Western wind, when will thou blow,
The small rain down can rain?
Christ, if my love were in my arms
And I in my bed again!
ANONYMOUS
ENGLISH (16TH CENTURY)
Alas, departing is ground of woe
Alas, departing is ground of woe, —
Other song can I not sing.
But why part I my lady fro,
Sith love was cause of our meeting?
The bitter tears of her weeping
Mine heart hath pierced so mortally
That to the death it will me bring
But if I see her hastily.
ANONYMOUS
ENGLISH (15TH CENTURY)
Sith fortune favors not and all things backward go
Sith fortune favors not and all things backward go,
And sith your mind hath so decreed to make an end of woe,
Sith now is no redress, but hence I must away,
Farewell, I waste no vainer words, I hope for better day.
BARNABE GOOGE
ENGLISH (1540-1594)
And wilt thou leave me thus
And wilt thou leave me thus?
Say nay, say nay, for shame,
To save thee from the blame
Of all my grief and grame.
And wilt thou leave me thus?
Say nay, say nay.
And wilt thou leave me thus,
That hath loved thee so long
In wealth and woe among?
And is thy heart so strong
As for to leave me thus?
Say nay, say nay.
And wilt thou leave me thus,
That hath given thee my heart,
Never for to depart
Neither for pain nor smart?
And wilt thou leave me thus?
Say nay, say nay.
And wilt thou leave me thus,
And have no more pity
Of him that loveth thee?
Alas! thy cruelty!
And wilt thou leave me thus?
Say nay, say nay.
SIR THOMAS WYATT
ENGLISH (C. 1503-1542)
Oft have I mused, but now at length I find
Oft have I mused, but now at length I find,
Why those that die, men say they do depart.
‘Depart!’—a word so gentle, to my mind,
Weakly did seem to paint death’s ugly dart.
But now the stars, with their strange course, do bind
Me one to leave, with whom I leave my heart;
I hear a cry of spirits, faint and blind,
That, parting thus, my chiefest part I part.
Part of my life, the loathëd part to me,
Lives to impart my weary clay some breath;
But that good part, wherein all comforts be,
Now dead, doth show departure is a death —
Yea, worse than death: death parts both woe and joy:
From joy I part, still living in annoy.
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY
ENGLISH (1554-1586)
Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing
Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,
And like enough thou know’st thy estimate:
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;
My bonds in thee are all determinate.
For how do I hold thee but by thy granting?
And for that riches where is my deserving?
The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
And so my patent back again is swerving.
Thyself thou gav’st, thy own worth then not knowing,
Or me, to whom thou gav’st it, else mistaking;
So thy great gift, upon misprision growing,
Comes home again, on better judgement making.
Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter,
In sleep, a king; but waking, no such matter.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
ENGLISH (1564-1616)
How like a winter hath my absence been
How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen,
What old December’s bareness everywhere!
And yet this time removed was summer’s time;
The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime
Like widowed wombs after their lords’ decease:
Yet this abundant issue seemed to me
But hope of orphans, and unfathered fruit;
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And, thou away, the very birds are mute;
Or if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer,
That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
ENGLISH (1564-1616)
Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part
Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part —
Nay, I have done: you get no more of me;
And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly I myself can free.
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again,
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of love’s latest breath,
When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes, —
Now, if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou might’st him yet recover.
MICHAEL DRAYTON
ENGLISH (1563-1631)
Sweetest love, I do not go
Sweetest love, I do not go,
For weariness of thee,
Nor in hope the world can show
A fitter love for me;
But since that I
Must die at last, ’tis best
To use myself in jest
Thus by feigned deaths to die.
Yesternight the sun went hence,
And yet is here to-day;
He hath no desire nor sense,
Nor half so short a way;
Then fear not me,
But believe that I shall make
Speedier journeys, since I take
More wings and spurs than he.
O how feeble is man’s power,
That if good fortune fall,
Cannot add another hour
Nor a lost hour recall!
But come bad chance,
And we join to it our strength,
And we teach it art and length,
Itself o’er us to advance.
When thou sigh’st, thou sigh’st not wind,
But sigh’st my soul away;
When thou weep’st, unkindly kind,
My life’s blood doth decay.
It cannot be
That thou lov’st me, as thou say’st,
If in thine my life thou waste,
That art the best of me.
Bartlett's Poems for Occasions Page 28
