Love

Diana: Fifth Decade, Sonnet 9

by Henry Constable 156?–1604?

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

Love

Whilst echo cries, "What shall become of me?"
And desolate, my desolations pity,
Thou in thy beauty's carack sitt'st to see
My tragic downfall, and my funeral ditty.
No timbrel, but my heart thou play'st upon,
Whose strings are stretched unto the highest key;
The diapason, love; love is the unison;
In love my life and labours waste away.
Only regardless to the world thou leav'st me,
Whilst slain hopes, turning from the feast of sorrow,
Unto despair, their king, which ne'er deceives me,
Captives my heart, whose black night hates the morrow,
And he in truth of my distressed cry
Plants me a weeping star within mine eye.

MLA

Constable, Henry. “Diana: Fifth Decade, Sonnet 9.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/constable/42/.

Chicago

Constable, Henry. “Diana: Fifth Decade, Sonnet 9.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/constable/42/.

Read this poem with the Codex →

More by Henry Constable