Whilst echo cries, "What shall become of me?"
And desolate, my desolations pity,
Thou in thy beauty's carack sitt'st to see
My tragic downfall, and my funeral ditty.
No timbrel, but my heart thou play'st upon,
Whose strings are stretched unto the highest key;
The diapason, love; love is the unison;
In love my life and labours waste away.
Only regardless to the world thou leav'st me,
Whilst slain hopes, turning from the feast of sorrow,
Unto despair, their king, which ne'er deceives me,
Captives my heart, whose black night hates the morrow,
And he in truth of my distressed cry
Plants me a weeping star within mine eye.
X
Prometheus for stealing living fire
From heaven's king, was judged eternal death;
In self-same flame with unrelenting ire
Bound fast to Caucasus' low foot beneath.
So I, for stealing living beauty's fire
Into my verse that it may always live,
And change his forms to shapes of my desire,
Thou beauty's queen, self sentence like dost give.
Bound to thy feet in chains of life I lie;
For to thine eyes I never dare aspire;
And in thy beauty's brightness do I fry,
As poor Prometheus in the scalding fire;
Which tears maintain as oil the lamp revives;
Only my succour in thy favour lies.