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Home  »  Elizabethan Sonnets  »  Sonnet XXIII. False Hope prolongs my ever certain grief

Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.

Delia

Sonnet XXIII. False Hope prolongs my ever certain grief

Samuel Daniel (1562–1619)

FALSE Hope prolongs my ever certain grief,

Traitor to me, and faithful to my Love.

A thousand times it promised me relief,

Yet never any true effect I prove.

Oft, when I find in her no truth at all,

I banish her, and blame her treachery:

Yet, soon again, I must her back recall,

As one that dies without her company.

Thus often, as I chase my Hope from me,

Straightway, she hastes her unto D E L I A’s eyes:

Fed with some pleasing look, there shall she be;

And so sent back. And thus my fortune lies.

Looks feed my Hope, Hope fosters me in vain;

Hopes are unsure, when certain is my Pain.