William Shakespeare Poems, Quotes And Sonnets

POEM IV: II

"A Lovers Complaint"
Part 2

These often bathed she in her fluxive eyes,

And often kiss'd, and often 'gan to tear:

Cried 'O false blood, thou register of lies,

What unapproved witness dost thou bear!

Ink would have seem'd more black and damned here!'

This said, in top of rage the lines she rents,

Big discontent so breaking their contents.

A reverend man that grazed his cattle nigh--

Sometime a blusterer, that the ruffle knew

Of court, of city, and had let go by

The swiftest hours, observed as they flew--

Towards this afflicted fancy fastly drew,

And, privileged by age, desires to know

In brief the grounds and motives of her woe.

So slides he down upon his grained bat,

And comely-distant sits he by her side;

When he again desires her, being sat,

Her grievance with his hearing to divide:

If that from him there may be aught applied

Which may her suffering ecstasy assuage,

'Tis promised in the charity of age.

'Father,' she says, 'though in me you behold

The injury of many a blasting hour,

Let it not tell your judgment I am old;

Not age, but sorrow, over me hath power:

I might as yet have been a spreading flower,

Fresh to myself, If I had self-applied

Love to myself and to no love beside.

'But, woe is me! too early I attended

A youthful suit--it was to gain my grace--

Of one by nature's outwards so commended,

That maidens' eyes stuck over all his face:

Love lack'd a dwelling, and made him her place;

And when in his fair parts she did abide,

She was new lodged and newly deified.

'His browny locks did hang in crooked curls;

And every light occasion of the wind

Upon his lips their silken parcels hurls.

What's sweet to do, to do will aptly find:

Each eye that saw him did enchant the mind,

For on his visage was in little drawn

What largeness thinks in Paradise was sawn.