Love

Diana: Sixth Decade, Sonnet 2

by Henry Constable 156?–1604?

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

Love

To live in hell, and heaven to behold;
To welcome life, and die a living death;
To sweat with heat, and yet be freezing cold;
To grasp at stars, and lie the earth beneath;
To treat a maze that never shall have end;
To burn in sighs, and starve in daily tears;
To climb a hill, and never to descend;
Giants to kill, and quake at childish fears;
To pine for food, and watch th' Hesperian tree;
To thirst for drink, and nectar still to draw;
To live accurs'd whom men hold blest to be,
And weep those wrongs which never creature saw:
If this be love, if love in these be founded,
My heart is love, for these in it are grounded.

MLA

Constable, Henry. “Diana: Sixth Decade, Sonnet 2.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/constable/45/.

Chicago

Constable, Henry. “Diana: Sixth Decade, Sonnet 2.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/constable/45/.

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