Yet do I know full well
    How much my praise must wrongful prove to you,
    But how the great desire can I oppose,
    Which ever in me grows,
    Since what surpasses thought ’twas mine to view,
    Though that nor others’ wit nor mine can tell? 
    Eyes! guilty authors of my cherish’d pain,
    That you alone can judge me, well I know,
    When from your burning beams I melt like snow,
    Haply your sweet disdain
    Offence in my unworthiness may see;
    Ah! were there not such fear,
    To calm the heat with which I kindle near,
    ’Twere bliss to die:  for better far to me
    Were death with them than life without could be.

    If yet not wasted quite—­
    So frail a thing before so fierce a flame—­
    ’Tis not from my own strength that safety came,
    But that some fear gives might,
    Freezing the warm blood coursing through its veins,
    To my poor heart better to bear the strife. 
    O valleys, hills, O forests, floods, and plains,
    Witnesses of my melancholy life! 
    For death how often have ye heard me pray! 
    Ah, miserable fate! 
    Where flight avails not, though ’tis death to stay;
    But, if a dread more great
    Restrain’d me not, despair would find a way,
    Speedy and short, my lingering pains to close,
    —­Hers then the crime who still no mercy shows.

    Why thus astray, O grief,
    Lead me to speak what I would leave unsaid? 
    Leave me, where pleasure me impels, to tread: 
    Not now my song complains
    Of you, sweet eyes, serene beyond belief,
    Nor yet of him who binds me in such chains: 
    Right well may you observe the varying hues
    Which o’er my visage oft the tyrant strews,
    And thence may guess what war within he makes,
    Where night and day he reigns,
    Strong in the power which from your light he takes: 
    Blessed ye were as bright,
    Save that from you is barr’d your own dear sight: 
    Yet often as to me those orbs you turn,
    What they to others are you well may learn.

    If, as to us who gaze
    Were known to you the charms incredible
    And heavenly, of which I sing the praise,
    No measured joy would swell
    Your heart, and haply, therefore, ’tis denied
    Unto the power which doth their motions guide. 
    Happy the soul for you which breathes the sigh,
    Best lights of heaven! for whom I grateful bless
    This life, which has for me no other joy. 
    Alas! so seldom why
    Give me what I can ne’er too much possess? 
    Why not more often see
    The ceaseless havoc which love makes of me? 
    And why that bliss so quickly from me steal,
    From time to time which my rapt senses feel?