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Home  »  Elizabethan Sonnets  »  Sonnet X. When Flora vaunts her in her proud array

Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.

Diella

Sonnet X. When Flora vaunts her in her proud array

Richard Linche (fl. 1596–1601)

WHEN FLORA vaunts her in her proud array,

clothing fair TELLUS in a spangled gown;

When BOREAS’ fury is exiled away,

and all the welkin cleared from angry frown:

At that same time, all Nature’s children joy;

trees leave, flowers bud, plants spring, and beasts increase.

Only my soul, surcharged with deep annoy,

cannot rejoice, nor sighs nor tears can cease:

Only the grafts of sorrow seem to grow;

set in my heart, no other spring I find.

Delights and pleasures are o’ergrown with woe,

laments and sobs possess my weeping mind.

The frost of grief so nips Delight at root:

No sun but She can do it any boot.