William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907.
Ode: ‘My only star’Francis Davison (1575?–1619?)
M
Why, why are your dear eyes,
Where all my life’s peace lies,
With me at war?
Why to my ruin tending,
Do they still lighten woe
On him that loves you so,
That all his thoughts in you have birth and ending?
O wherefore do the words,
Which your sweet tongue affords,
No hope impart?
But cruel without measure,
To my eternal pain,
Still thunder forth disdain
On him whose life depends upon your pleasure?
Why do your gestures, which
All eyes and hearts bewitch,
My bliss destroy?
And pity’s sky o’erclouding,
Of hate an endless shower
On that poor heart still pour,
Which in your bosom seeks his only shrouding?
Why are your lines, whose sight
Should cure me with delight,
My poison found?
Which, through my veins dispersing,
Doth make my heart and mind
And all my senses, find
A living death in torments past rehearsing?
Hath of your eyes deprived me,
Which both killed and revived me
And sweetened hate;
Your sweet voice and sweet graces,
Which clothed in lovely weeds
Your cruel words and deeds,
Are intercepted by far distant places.
Which presence still presented,
Absence hath not absented,
Nor made to languish;
No, no, to increase my paining,
The cause being, ah! removed
For which the effect I loved,
The effect is still in greatest force remaining.
If to your hard heart’s center
Tears, vows, and prayers may enter,
Desist your rigour;
And let kind lines assure me,
Since to my deadly wound
No salve else can be found,
That you that kill me, yet at length will cure me.