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Home  »  Elizabethan Sonnets  »  Sonnet 23. Love banished heaven, in earth was held in scorn

Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.

Idea

Sonnet 23. Love banished heaven, in earth was held in scorn

Michael Drayton (1563–1631)

[First printed in 1599 (No. 24), and in all later editions.]

LOVE banished heaven, in earth was held in scorn;

Wand’ring abroad in need and beggary:

And wanting friends, though of a goddess born,

Yet craved the alms of such as passèd by.

I, like a man devout and charitable,

Clothèd the naked, lodged this wandering guest;

With sighs and tears still furnishing his table,

With what might make the miserable blest.

But this Ungrateful! for my good desert,

Inticed my thoughts, against me to conspire;

Who gave consent to steal away my heart,

And set my breast (his lodging) on a fire.

Well, well, my friends! when beggars grow thus bold;

No marvel then, though Charity grow cold.