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Home  »  Elizabethan Sonnets  »  Sonnet XXXIV. Fie, Pleasure! fie! Thou cloy’st me with delight

Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.

Fidessa

Sonnet XXXIV. Fie, Pleasure! fie! Thou cloy’st me with delight

Bartholomew Griffin (d. 1602)

FIE, Pleasure! fie! Thou cloy’st me with delight;

Sweet thoughts, you kill me, if you lower stray!

O many be the joys of one short night!

Tush, fancies never can Desire allay!

Happy, unhappy thoughts! I think, and have not.

Pleasure, O pleasing plain! Shews nought avail me!

Mine own conceit doth glad me, more I crave not!

Yet wanting substance, woe doth still assail me.

“Babies do children please! and shadows, fools!”

“Shews have deceived the wisest, many a time!”

“Ever to want our wish, our courage cools!”

“The ladder broken, ’tis in vain to climb.”

But I must wish, and crave, and seek, and climb;

It’s hard, if I obtain not grace in time!