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Home  »  The Book of Sorrow  »  Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset (1536–1608)

Andrew Macphail, comp. The Book of Sorrow. 1916.

‘O Sorrow, alas, sith Sorrow is thy name’

Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset (1536–1608)

From ‘The Induction’

O SORROW, alas, sith Sorrow is thy name,

And that to thee this drear doth well pertain,

In vain it were to seek to cease the same:

But, as a man himself with sorrow slain,

So I, alas, do comfort thee in pain,

That here in sorrow art foresunk so deep

That, at thy sight, I can but sigh and weep.

‘Lo here,’ quoth Sorrow; ‘Princes of renown,

That whilom sat on top of fortune’s wheel,

Now laid full low, like wretches whirlèd down,

Ev’n with one frown, that stay’d but with a smile:

And now behold the thing that thou erewhile

Saw only in thought; and what thou now shalt hear,

Recount the same to kesar, king, and peer.’