Elegy 10

Awake my Muse put on thy best attire
To sing her Beauty, and my raging fire:
Make all the world know, (since she will not know)
That she is much to blame to use me so.
Sweet, cruel, fair one! (unto all of these
You may reply causes of my unease)
For you are sweet as flowry May's west wind;
Why should so sweet a Creature be unkinde?
And you are fair, and fair, and sweet must be,
The reason I endure your Cruelty.
Each Statue I see makes me my Case thus mone;
It hath a Body, you an heart of stone.
I fain would die, but thinking I must come
To be a wanderer in Elizium,
I do destroy that infant-thought; for there
No Soul's so pure as is your body here.
Each night my troubled thoughts keep sleep away;
That time's to me as busie as the day:
But you that are with never a care opprest,
Enamour the night Deities in your rest;
Old Somnus fears his wand may do some ill,
And therefore charms your eies with kisses still.
O that I knew the way whereby to move
My sweet and cruel fair One unto love!
Will sighing do it? O you Gods of wind!
Lend me your breathes that I may sigh her kind:
Will tears prevail? O that my eies would then
Melt out themselves into an Ocean!
Or may Entreaties win upon her sense?
Assist me all you Powers of eloquence;
Pity my miseries which are grown so high,
That you must pity them, or I shall die:
And be not henceforth harsh; That I may finde
My sweet and fair One like a Goddess kinde.