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Home  »  The Poetical Works by Sir Thomas Wyatt  »  The Lover bemoaneth his unhappiness that he cannot obtain Grace, yet cannot cease loving

Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503–42). The Poetical Works. 1880.

Odes

The Lover bemoaneth his unhappiness that he cannot obtain Grace, yet cannot cease loving

ALL heavy minds

Do seek to ease their charge;

And that that most them binds

To let at large.

Then why should I

Hold pain within my heart,

And may my tune apply,

To ease my smart.

My faithful Lute

Alone shall hear me plain,

For else all other suit

Is clean in vain.

For where I sue

Redress of all my grief;

Lo! they do most eschew

My heart’s relief.

Alas! my dear!

Have I deserved so?

That no help may appear

Of all my woe!

Whom speak I to?

Unkind, and deaf of ear!

Alas! lo! I go,

And wot not where.

Where is my thought?

Where wanders my desire?

Where may the thing be sought

That I require?

Light in the wind

Doth flee all my delight;

Where truth and faithful mind

Are put to flight.

Who shall me give

Feather’d wings for to flee?

The thing that doth me grieve

That I may see!

Who would go seek

The cause whereby to pain?

Who could his foe beseek

For ease of pain!

My chance doth so

My woful case procure,

To offer to my foe

My heart to cure.

What hope I then

To have any redress!

Of whom, or where, or when?

Who can express!

No! since despair

Hath set me in this case,

In vain is’t in the air

To say, Alas!

I seek nothing

But thus for to discharge

My heart of sore sighing,

To plain at large.

And with my lute

Sometime to ease my pain;

For else all other suit

Is clean in vain.