141. Follow your Saint

FOLLOW your saint, follow with accents sweet!

Haste you, sad notes, fall at her flying feet!

There, wrapt in cloud of sorrow, pity move,

And tell the ravisher of my soul I perish for her love:

But if she scorns my never-ceasing pain,

Then burst with sighing in her sight, and ne’er return again!

All that I sung still to her praise did tend;

Still she was first, still she my songs did end;

Yet she my love and music both doth fly,

The music that her echo is and beauty’s sympathy:

Then let my notes pursue her scornful flight!

It shall suffice that they were breathed and died for her delight.