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Home  »  The Book of Elizabethan Verse  »  William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

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

Being Your Slave

William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

BEING your slave, what should I do but tend

Upon the hours and times of your desire?

I have no precious time at all to spend,

Nor services to do, till you require.

Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour

Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,

Nor think the bitterness of absence sour

When you have bid your servant once adieu:

Nor dare I question with my jealous thought

Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,

But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought

Save, where you are how happy you make those!

So true a fool is love, that in your Will

Though you do anything, he thinks no ill.