| |
| O DEAR vexation of my troubled soul! | |
| My life, with grief, when wilt thou consumate? | |
| The dear remembrance of my passing soul; | |
| Mine heart, with some rests, hope doth animate. | |
| How many have those conquering eyes subdued! | 5 |
| How many vanquished captives to thine heart! | |
| Head iron-hearted Captains (when they viewed) | |
| Were drawn, till they were wounded with thy dart! | |
| O when, I, their haired bodies have beheld, | |
| Their martial stomachs, and oft-wounded face; | 10 |
| Which bitter tumults and garboils foretelled; | |
| In which, it seemed they found no coward’s place: | |
| Then, I recalled how far Love’s power exceeds, | |
| Above the bloody menace of rough war! | |
| Where every wounded heart close inward bleeds; | 15 |
| And sudden pierced, with the twinkling of a star! | |
| Then (when such iron-hearted Captains be, | |
| To thine heart’s Bulwark, forcèd for to try | |
| Which way to win that Fort by battery; | |
| And how all Conquerors, there conquered lie!) | 20 |
| Methinks, thine heart, or else thine eyes be made | |
| (Because they can such iron objects force) | |
| Of hardest adamant! that men (which laid | |
| Continual siege) be thralled, without remorse. | |
| Thine heart, of adamant! because it takes | 25 |
| The hardest hearts, drawn prisoners unto thine. | |
| Thine eye! because it, wounded many makes. | |
| Yet no transpiercing beams can pierce those eyne! | |
| Thine heart of adamant, which none can wound! | |
| Thine eye of adamant, unpiercèd found! | 30 |
| |
