One sun transfix'd hath burnt my heart outright,
One moon opposed my love in darkness throws.
One star hath bid my thoughts my wrongs disclose.
Saints scorn poor swains, shrines do my vows no right.
Yet if my love be found a holy fire,
Pure, unstained, without idolatry,
And she nathless in hate of my desire,
Lives to repose her in my misery,
My sun, my moon, my star, my saint, my shrine,
Mine be the torment but the guilt be thine!
II
To live in hell, and heaven to behold;
To welcome life, and die a living death;
To sweat with heat, and yet be freezing cold;
To grasp at stars, and lie the earth beneath;
To treat a maze that never shall have end;
To burn in sighs, and starve in daily tears;
To climb a hill, and never to descend;
Giants to kill, and quake at childish fears;
To pine for food, and watch th' Hesperian tree;
To thirst for drink, and nectar still to draw;
To live accurs'd whom men hold blest to be,
And weep those wrongs which never creature saw:
If this be love, if love in these be founded,
My heart is love, for these in it are grounded.
III
A carver, having loved too long in vain,
Hewed out the portraiture of Venus' son
In marble rock, upon the which did rain
Small drizzling drops, that from a fount did run:
Imagining the drops would either wear
His fury out, or quench his living flame;
But when he saw it bootless did appear,
He swore the water did augment the same.
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