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Home  »  Elizabethan Sonnets  »  XXXVII. If scalding sighs, my faith may testify

Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.

Laura—Part III

XXXVII. If scalding sighs, my faith may testify

Robert Tofte (1561–1620)

IF scalding sighs, my faith may testify;

And brinish tears, of love may warrant be:

Both th’ one and th’ other thou hast seen with eye!

Then what wouldst have, hard hearted! more of me?

But thou, perhaps, though much I have endured,

Wouldst yet be better of my faith assured.

Then with thine eyes, into my breast do peer!

Which, for the nonce, I leave to open sight;

And that which now thou doubt’st, see shalt thou clear.

Ah, mark it then; and view what shows so bright!

But too too cruel art thou, and precise;

That will not credit give to thine own eyes!