Love

Another to his Cynthia

by Anonymous (Elizabethan miscellanies) c. 1575–1602

From England's Helicon (1600), ed. A. H. Bullen (1887)

Love

My Thoughts are wing'd with Hopes, my Hopes with Love;
Mount Love unto the moon in clearest night.
And say, as she doth in the heavens move,
On earth so wanes and waxeth my delight:
And whisper this, but softly, in her ears,
" Hope oft doth hang the head and Trust shed tears.

And you, my Thoughts, that some mistrust do carry.
If for mistrust my mistress do you blame.
Say, though you alter, yet you do not vary.
As she doth change and yet remain the same:
Distrust doth enter hearts, but not infect.
And Love is sweetest season'd with Suspect.

If she for this with clouds do mask her eyes,
And make the heavens dark with her disdain,
With windy sighs disperse them in the skies,
Or with thy tears dissolve them into rain,
Thoughts, Hopes, and Love, return to me no more.
Till Cynthia shine as she hath done before.

✦ ✦ ✦

Signed "Ignoto" in England's Helicon. Printed in the original with the remark that these three ditties were taken out of John Dowland's Book of Tableture for the Lute, the authors' names not being given there. Follows "[Another of his Cynthia]."

MLA

Anonymous (Elizabethan miscellanies). “Another to his Cynthia.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/anonymous-elizabethan-miscellanies/24/.

Chicago

Anonymous (Elizabethan miscellanies). “Another to his Cynthia.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/anonymous-elizabethan-miscellanies/24/.

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