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Home  »  Elizabethan Sonnets  »  Sonnet XLI. The prison I am in is thy fair face!

Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.

Fidessa

Sonnet XLI. The prison I am in is thy fair face!

Bartholomew Griffin (d. 1602)

THE PRISON I am in is thy fair face!

Wherein my liberty enchainèd lies;

My thoughts, the bolts that hold me in the place;

My food, the pleasing looks of thy fair eyes!

Deep is the prison where I lie enclosed,

Strong are the bolts that in this cell contain me.

Sharp is the food necessity imposed,

When hunger makes me feed on that which pains me.

Yet do I love, embrace, and follow fast,

That holds, that keeps, that discontents me most:

And list not break, unlock, or seek to waste

The place, the bolts, the food (though I be lost!),

Better in prison ever to remain;

Than, being out, to suffer greater pain.