A Lover's Complaint
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| From off a hill whose concave womb reworded | 1
| A plaintful story from a sistering vale, | 2
| My spirits to attend this double voice accorded, | 3
| And down I laid to list the sad-tuned tale; | 4
| Ere long espied a fickle maid full pale, | 5
| Tearing of papers, breaking rings a-twain, | 6
| Storming her world with sorrow's wind and rain. | 7
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| | Upon her head a platted hive of straw, | 8
| Which fortified her visage from the sun, | 9
| Whereon the thought might think sometime it saw | 10
| The carcass of beauty spent and done: | 11
| Time had not scythed all that youth begun, | 12
| Nor youth all quit; but, spite of heaven's fell rage, | 13
| Some beauty peep'd through lattice of sear'd age. | 14
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| | Oft did she heave her napkin to her eyne, | 15
| Which on it had conceited characters, | 16
| Laundering the silken figures in the brine | 17
| That season'd woe had pelleted in tears, | 18
| And often reading what contents it bears; | 19
| As often shrieking undistinguish'd woe, | 20
| In clamours of all size, both high and low. | 21
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| | Sometimes her levell'd eyes their carriage ride, | 22
| As they did battery to the spheres intend; | 23
| Sometime diverted their poor balls are tied | 24
| To the orbed earth; sometimes they do extend | 25
| Their view right on; anon their gazes lend | 26
| To every place at once, and, nowhere fix'd, | 27
| The mind and sight distractedly commix'd. | 28
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| | Her hair, nor loose nor tied in formal plat, | 29
| Proclaim'd in her a careless hand of pride | 30
| For some, untuck'd, descended her sheaved hat, | 31
| Hanging her pale and pined cheek beside; | 32
| Some in her threaden fillet still did bide, | 33
| And true to bondage would not break from thence, | 34
| Though slackly braided in loose negligence. | 35
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| | A thousand favours from a maund she drew | 36
| Of amber, crystal, and of beaded jet, | 37
| Which one by one she in a river threw, | 38
| Upon whose weeping margent she was set; | 39
| Like usury, applying wet to wet, | 40
| Or monarch's hands that let not bounty fall | 41
| Where want cries some, but where excess begs all. | 42
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| | Of folded schedules had she many a one, | 43
| Which she perused, sigh'd, tore, and gave the flood; | 44
| Crack'd many a ring of posied gold and bone | 45
| Bidding them find their sepulchres in mud; | 46
| Found yet moe letters sadly penn'd in blood, | 47
| With sleided silk feat and affectedly | 48
| Enswathed, and seal'd to curious secrecy. | 49
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| | These often bathed she in her fluxive eyes, | 50
| And often kiss'd, and often 'gan to tear: | 51
| Cried 'O false blood, thou register of lies, | 52
| What unapproved witness dost thou bear! | 53
| Ink would have seem'd more black and damned here!' | 54
| This said, in top of rage the lines she rents, | 55
| Big discontent so breaking their contents. | 56
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| | A reverend man that grazed his cattle nigh-- | 57
| Sometime a blusterer, that the ruffle knew | 58
| Of court, of city, and had let go by | 59
| The swiftest hours, observed as they flew-- | 60
| Towards this afflicted fancy fastly drew, | 61
| And, privileged by age, desires to know | 62
| In brief the grounds and motives of her woe. | 63
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| | So slides he down upon his grained bat, | 64
| And comely-distant sits he by her side; | 65
| When he again desires her, being sat, | 66
| Her grievance with his hearing to divide: | 67
| If that from him there may be aught applied | 68
| Which may her suffering ecstasy assuage, | 69
| 'Tis promised in the charity of age. | 70
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| | 'Father,' she says, 'though in me you behold | 71
| The injury of many a blasting hour, | 72
| Let it not tell your judgment I am old; | 73
| Not age, but sorrow, over me hath power: | 74
| I might as yet have been a spreading flower, | 75
| Fresh to myself, If I had self-applied | 76
| Love to myself and to no love beside. | 77
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| | 'But, woe is me! too early I attended | 78
| A youthful suit--it was to gain my grace-- | 79
| Of one by nature's outwards so commended, | 80
| That maidens' eyes stuck over all his face: | 81
| Love lack'd a dwelling, and made him her place; | 82
| And when in his fair parts she did abide, | 83
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