Love

The Passionate Prisoner

by Anonymous (Elizabethan miscellanies) c. 1575–1602

From A Poetical Rhapsody (1602), ed. A. H. Bullen (1890–91)

Love

Ye walls that shut me up from sight of men,
Inclosed wherein alive I buried lie;
And thou sometime my bed, but now my den,
Where, smothered up, the light of sun I fly:
Oh! shut yourselves; each chink and crevice strain,
That none but you may hear me thus complain.

My hollow cries that beat thy stony side,
Vouchsafe to beat, but beat them back again;
That when my grief hath speech to me denied,
Mine ears may hear the witness of my pain.
As for my tears, whose streams must ever last,
My silent couch shall drink them up as fast.

✦ ✦ ✦

Credited to "A. W." in Francis Davison's own manuscript list (Bullen prints the initials in square brackets).

MLA

Anonymous (Elizabethan miscellanies). “The Passionate Prisoner.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/anonymous-elizabethan-miscellanies/89/.

Chicago

Anonymous (Elizabethan miscellanies). “The Passionate Prisoner.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/anonymous-elizabethan-miscellanies/89/.

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