Love

Diana: Fifth Decade, Sonnet 1

by Henry Constable 156?–1604?

From Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles, ed. M. F. Crow (1896)

Love

Ay me, poor wretch, my prayer is turned to sin!
I say, "I love!" My mistress says "'Tis lust!"
Thus most we lose where most we seek to win.
Wit will make wicked what is ne'er so just.
And yet I can supplant her false surmise.
Lust is a fire that for an hour or twain
Giveth a scorching blaze and then he dies;
Love a continual furnace doth maintain.
A furnace! Well, this a furnace may be called;
For it burns inward, yields a smothering flame,
Sighs which, like boiled lead's smoking vapour, scald.
I sigh apace at echo of sighs' name.
Long have I served; no short blaze is my love.
Hid joys there are that maids scorn till they prove.

MLA

Constable, Henry. “Diana: Fifth Decade, Sonnet 1.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/constable/34/.

Chicago

Constable, Henry. “Diana: Fifth Decade, Sonnet 1.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/constable/34/.

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