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Home  »  The Book of Elizabethan Verse  »  Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503–1542)

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907.

My Lady’s Hand

Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503–1542)

O GOODLY hand!

Wherein doth stand

My heart distraught in pain;

Dear hand, alas!

In little space

My life thou dost restrain.

O fingers slight!

Departed right,

So long, so small, so round;

Goodly begone,

And yet a bone,

Most cruel in my wound.

With lilies white

And roses bright

Doth strain thy colour fair;

Nature did lend

Each finger’s end

A pearl for to repair.

Consent at last,

Since that thou hast

My heart in thy demesne

For service true

On me to rue,

And reach me love again.

And if not so,

There with more woe

Enforce thyself to strain

This simple heart,

That suffer’d smart,

And rid it out of pain.