Sonnet XXX: Those Priests

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1. A Cruel Mistress We read of kings and gods that kindly took A pitcher fill’d with water from the brook ; But I have daily tender’d without thanks Rivers of tears that overflow their banks. A slaughter’d bull will appease angry Jove, A horse the Sun, a lamb the god of love, But she disdains the spotless sacrifice […]...
2. Sonnet XL: My Heart the Anvil My heart the anvil where my thoughts do beat; My words the hammers fashioning my desire; My breast the forge including all the heat; Love is the fuel which maintains the fire; My sighs the bellows which the flame increaseth, Filling mine ears with noise and nightly groaning; Toiling with pain, my labor never ceaseth, […]...
3. Sonnet II: High on a Rock High on a rock, coaeval with the skies, A Temple stands, rear’d by immortal pow’rs To Chastity divine! ambrosial flow’rs Twining round icicles, in columns rise, Mingling with pendent gems of orient dyes! Piercing the air, a golden crescent tow’rs, Veil’d by transparent clouds; while smiling hours Shake from their varying wings celestial joys! The […]...
4. Sonnet XVI: Mongst All the Creatures An Allusion to the Phoenix ‘Mongst all the creatures in this spacious round Of the birds’ kind, the Phoenix is alone, Which best by you of living things is known; None like to that, none like to you is found. Your beauty is the hot and splend’rous sun, The precious spices be your chaste desire, […]...
5. Oh! Doubt Me Not Oh! doubt me not the season Is o’er when Folly made me rove, And now the vestal, Reason, Shall watch the fire awaked by Love. Although this heart was early blown, And fairest hands disturb’d the tree, They only shook some blossoms down Its fruit has all been kept for thee. Then doubt me not […]...
6. Sonnet I FROM fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby beauty’s rose might never die, But as the riper should by time decease, His tender heir might bear his memory: But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes, Feed’st thy light’st flame with self-substantial fuel, Making a famine where abundance lies, Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet […]...
7. Sonnet (I) My God, where is that ancient heat towards thee, Wherewith whole showls of Martyrs once did burn, Besides their other flames? Doth Poetry Wear Venus livery? only serve her turn? Why are not Sonnets made of thee? and layes Upon thine Altar burnt? Cannot thy love Heighten a spirit to sound out thy praise As […]...
8. Sonnet 1: From fairest creatures we desire increase From fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby beauty’s rose might never die, But as the riper should by time decease, His tender heir might bear his memory; But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes, Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel, Making a famine where abundance lies, Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet […]...
9. Fire This life that we call our own Is neither strong nor free; A flame in the wind of death, It trembles ceaselessly. And this all we can do To use our little light Before, in the piercing wind, It flickers into night: To yield the heat of the flame, To grudge not, but to give […]...
10. Dissolute Many years have I still to burn, detained Like a candle flame on this body; but I enshine A darkness within me, a presence which sleeps contained In my flame of living, her soul enfolded in mine. And through these years, while I burn on the fuel of life, What matter the stuff I lick […]...
11. Sonnet 10 – Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright, Let temple burn, or flax; an equal light Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed: And love is fire. And when I say at need I love thee. . . mark! . . . I love thee-in thy sight I […]...
12. THE WARNING Beware! The Israelite of old, who tore The lion in his path, when, poor and blind, He saw the blessed light of heaven no more, Shorn of his noble strength and forced to grind In prison, and at last led forth to be A pander to Philistine revelry, Upon the pillars of the temple laid […]...
13. Senses Deliverance is not for me in renunciation. I feel the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of delight. Thou ever pourest for me the fresh draught of thy wine of various Colours and fragrance, filling this earthen vessel to the brim. My world will light its hundred different lamps with thy flame And place […]...
14. Psalm 02 Done Aug. 8. 1653. Terzetti. Why do the Gentiles tumult, and the Nations Muse a vain thing, the Kings of th’earth upstand With power, and Princes in their Congregations Lay deep their plots together through each Land, Against the Lord and his Messiah dear. Let us break off; say they, by strength of hand Their […]...
15. PLAYING AT PRIESTS WITHIN a town where parity According to old form we see, That is to say, where Catholic And Protestant no quarrels pick, And where, as in his father’s day, Each worships God in his own way, We Luth’ran children used to dwell, By songs and sermons taught as well. The Catholic clingclang in truth Sounded […]...
16. Job the Rejected They met, and overwhelming her distrust With penitence, he praised away her fear; They married, and Job gave him half a year To wreck the temple, as we knew he must. He fumbled hungrily to readjust A fallen altar, but the road was clear By which it was her will to disappear That evening when […]...
17. SONNET OF AUTUMN THEY say to me, thy clear and crystal eyes: “Why dost thou love me so, strange lover mine?” Be sweet, be still! My heart and soul despise All save that antique brute-like faith of thine; And will not bare the secret of their shame To thee whose hand soothes me to slumbers long, Nor their […]...
18. Sonnet 30 (Fire And Ice) My love is like to ice, and I to fire: How comes it then that this her cold so great Is not dissolv’d through my so hot desire, But harder grows, the more I her entreat? Or how comes it that my exceeding heat Is not delayed by her heart frozen cold, But that I […]...
19. The Other Side of a Mirror I sat before my glass one day, And conjured up a vision bare, Unlike the aspects glad and gay, That erst were found reflected there – The vision of a woman, wild With more than womanly despair. Her hair stood back on either side A face bereft of loveliness. It had no envy now to […]...
20. Sonnet LIII: Clear Anker Another to the River Anker Clear Anker, on whose silver-sanded shore My soul-shrin’d saint, my fair Idea, lies, O blessed brook, whose milk-white swans adore The crystal stream refined by her eyes, Where sweet myrrh-breathing Zephyr in the Spring Gently distils his nectar-dropping showers, Where nightingales in Arden sit and sing Among the dainty dew-impearled […]...
21. Sonnet XLIX: Thou Leaden Brain Thou leaden brain, which censur’st what I write, And say’st my lines be dull and do not move, I marvel not thou feel’st not my delight, Which never felt’st my fiery touch of love. But thou, whose pen hath like a pack-horse serv’d, Whose stomach unto gall hath turn’d thy food, Whose senses, like poor […]...
22. Sonnet XXII: Love, Banish'd Heav'n Love, banish’d Heav’n, on Earth was held in scorn, Wand’ring abroad in need and beggary, And wanting friends, though of a Goddess born, Yet crav’d the alms of such as passed by. I, like a man devout and charitable, Clothed the naked, lodg’d this wand’ring guest, With sighs and tears still furnishing his table With […]...
23. Holy Sonnet II: As Due By Many Titles I Resign As due by many titles I resign My self to Thee, O God; first I was made By Thee, and for Thee, and when I was decayed Thy blood bought that, the which before was Thine; I am Thy son, made with Thy Self to shine, Thy servant, whose pains Thou hast still repaid, Thy […]...
24. My Ship and I O it’s I that am the captain of a tidy little ship, Of a ship that goes a sailing on the pond; And my ship it keeps a-turning all around and all about; But when I’m a little older, I shall find the secret out How to send my vessel sailing on beyond. For I […]...
25. Sonnet CLIV The little Love-god lying once asleep Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand, Whilst many nymphs that vow’d chaste life to keep Came tripping by; but in her maiden hand The fairest votary took up that fire Which many legions of true hearts had warm’d; And so the general of hot desire Was sleeping by […]...
26. 281. Sonnet to R. Graham, Esq., on Receiving a Favour I CALL no Goddess to inspire my strains, A fabled Muse may suit a bard that feigns: Friend of my life! my ardent spirit burns, And all the tribute of my heart returns, For boons accorded, goodness ever new, The gifts still dearer, as the giver you. Thou orb of day! thou other paler light! […]...
27. Sonnet 154: The little Love-god lying once asleep The little love god lying once asleep Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand, Whilst many nymphs that vowed chaste life to keep Came tripping by; but in her maiden hand, The fairest votary took up that fire Which many legions of true hearts had warmed, And so the general of hot desire Was sleeping […]...
28. Amoretti III: The Sovereign Beauty The sovereign beauty which I do admire, Witness the world how worthy to be praised: The light whereof hath kindled heavenly fire In my frail spirit, by her from baseness raised; That being now with her huge brightness dazed, Base thing I can no more endure to view; But looking still on her, I stand […]...
29. Sonnet XCII But do thy worst to steal thyself away, For term of life thou art assured mine, And life no longer than thy love will stay, For it depends upon that love of thine. Then need I not to fear the worst of wrongs, When in the least of them my life hath end. I see […]...
30. Sonnet 92: But do thy worst to steal thy self away But do thy worst to steal thy self away, For term of life thou art assurèd mine, And life no longer than thy love will stay, For it depends upon that love of thine. Then need I not to fear the worst of wrongs, When in the least of them my life hath end; I […]...
31. Sonnet 05 Seeing you have not come with me, nor spent This day’s suggestive beauty as we ought, I have gone forth alone and been content To make you mistress only of my thought. And I have blessed the fate that was so kind In my life’s agitations to include This moment’s refuge where my sense can […]...
32. Sonnet 96: Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness; Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport; Both grace and faults are loved of more and less; Thou mak’st faults graces that to thee resort. As on the finger of a thronèd queen, The basest jewel will be well esteemed. So are those errors that […]...
33. Sonnet XCVI Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness; Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport; Both grace and faults are loved of more and less; Thou makest faults graces that to thee resort. As on the finger of a throned queen The basest jewel will be well esteem’d, So are those errors that […]...
34. Sonnet CLIII Cupid laid by his brand, and fell asleep: A maid of Dian’s this advantage found, And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep In a cold valley-fountain of that ground; Which borrow’d from this holy fire of Love A dateless lively heat, still to endure, And grew a seething bath, which yet men prove Against strange […]...
35. Poems On The Slave Trade – Sonnet II Why dost thou beat thy breast and rend thine hair, And to the deaf sea pour thy frantic cries? Before the gale the laden vessel flies; The Heavens all-favoring smile, the breeze is fair; Hark to the clamors of the exulting crew! Hark how their thunders mock the patient skies! Why dost thou shriek and […]...
36. Purity Life of my life, I shall ever try to keep my body pure, knowing That thy living touch is upon all my limbs. I shall ever try to keep all untruths out from my thoughts, knowing That thou art that truth which has kindled the light of reason in my mind. I shall ever try […]...
37. Sonnet 153: Cupid laid by his brand and fell asleep Cupid laid by his brand and fell asleep, A maid of Dian’s this advantage found, And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep In a cold valley-fountain of that ground; Which borrowed from this holy fire of Love A dateless lively heat still to endure, And grew a seeting bath, which yet men prove Against strange […]...
38. Sonnet CL O, from what power hast thou this powerful might With insufficiency my heart to sway? To make me give the lie to my true sight, And swear that brightness doth not grace the day? Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill, That in the very refuse of thy deeds There is such strength and […]...
39. Sonnet VIII MOre then most faire, full of the liuing fire, Kindled aboue vnto the maker neere: No eies buy ioyes, in which al powers conspire, That to the world naught else be counted deare. Thrugh your bright beams doth not ye blinded guest, Shoot out his darts to base affections wound: But Angels come to lead […]...
40. Sonnet 150: O from what power hast thou this powerful might O, from what power hast thou this powerful might With insufficiency my heart to sway? To make me give the lie to my true sight, And swear that brightness doth not grace the day? Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill, That in the very refuse of thy deeds There is such strength and […]...