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Home  »  Elizabethan Sonnets  »  Sonnet XII. The tablet of my heavy fortunes here

Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.

Sonnets after Astrophel, etc.

Sonnet XII. The tablet of my heavy fortunes here

Samuel Daniel (1562–1619)

[Not reprinted in Delia, Daniel’s authorised collection, 1592–4.]

THE TABLET of my heavy fortunes here

Upon thine altar, Paphian Power! I place.

The grievous shipwrack of my travels dear

In bulged bark, all perished in disgrace.

That traitor LOVE! was pilot to my woe;

My sails were Hope, spread with my Sighs of Grief;

The twin lights which my hapless course did show

Hard by th’inconstant sands of false relief,

Were two bright stars which led my view apart.

A SIREN’s voice allured me come so near

To perish on the marble of her heart:

A danger which my soul did never fear.

Lo, thus he fares that trusts a calm too much

And thus fare I whose credit hath been such.