Sixty-Five Sonnets With Prefatory Remarks on the Accordance of the Sonnet with the Powers of the English Language: Also, A Few Miscellaneous Poems [by Thomas Doubleday] |
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 | Sixty-Five Sonnets |  |
44
XVIII.
O woman, thou, who, for an hour of vanity,Oft doom'st another to an age of pain,
To mar a heart and cast it back again
Favours, soft creature, nothing of humanity;
And know, 'tis only reasonless inanity
To ask “what tie can bind thee to retain,”
And say, “the bondage of thy rosy chain
Can little harm the most unstable sanity:”
For, as within the gentlest grasp continuing
The butterfly assured misfortune brings,
So love, alack! is such a tender minion,
That if ye hold him, e'en in silken strings,
Ye chafe the fragile plumage from his wings,
And haply, too, for ever, lame his pinion.
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