MADRIGALS.
I.
Me, though unbound yet free in vain,
What fetter binds and brings to thee?
If sight of thee, with unseen chain,
Can fetter those thyself would'st free,
What power have I those eyes to flee
Whose warm desire
The darts of Love hath dipt in fire?
II.
Why memory of those eyes, and the dear hope
Whereby I live not only, but am blest,
From hour to hour do all my days beguile,
Demand the cause, wherewith in vain I cope,
Of Love, and Nature, that allow no rest,
And the fond wont that mine hath been long while
With all life's hours to pile
Love's monument to thee.
Life soon were death, could life no longer see
Your light, sweet eyes:
For all my life is by your light begot,
And soon it dies
If banisht, after birth, to any spot
Unsweeten'd by the light that in you lies.
III.
How is it, that I am mine no more?
Who from myself hath banisht me?
Who in myself more seems to be
At home, than was myself before?
How hath it happ'd, that I should miss
The moment when she slipp'd so slyly
Into my heart? and what is this,
This wistful love, that through the eyes
Into the soul doth steal so shyly,
And, there grown bold and wanton, tries
A thousand ways of exit wily?
IV.
If, here, in sculptured stone,
Whereto erewhile did Art her form consign,
That form, while years roll on,
May live, O what with her sweet self,—divine
Not to mine only, but all mortal sight—
By Heaven shall then be done?
Since she Heaven's making is; this marble, merely mine!
Yet must she fade, and follow Time's brief flight;
And all her beauty is but hers in spite,
If Death, that takes her life, the dead stone spare.
What shall repair
This wrong to Nature done by Time's disdain,
If, while her son's works stay, her own be ta'en?
V.
While, to the call of Time, my days fleet fast,
Love still disputes Time's power,
Nor will forego one hour
That's owed him yet, despite the long years past.
My soul, that groans and cries
As one that, injured, dies,
Laments in me my better life downcast.
'Twixt what to bless and blast
Hath power,—'twixt Death and Love,
Dubious, my vext heart strove
To choose the best, yet doth it hug the worst.
Thus by bad custom is good counsel curst.
