Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.

Laura—Part II

XXXIII. If love, wherein I burn, were but a fire

Robert Tofte (1561–1620)

IF love, wherein I burn, were but a fire;

I quenched it had, with water of my plaints:

If water, these my Plaints; I this desire

Had dried through inward heat, my heart that taints.

But LOVE, that in my griefs doth take delight,

Both fire and water turns, to work me spite.

Fly then, this LOVE! since such is his great power

As waves to fire, and fire to waves, he turns:

And with an absent Beauty, every hour,

My fainting heart with Fancy’s fuel burns;

And, ’gainst all sense, makes me, of CARe and IL

More than of good and comfoRT, to have will.