| Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904. | | | | Diana | The Fourth Decade
Sonnet III. When your perfections to my thoughts appear | | Henry Constable (1562–1613) |
| | | WHEN your perfections to my thoughts appear, | |
| They say among themselves, “O happy we, | |
| Which ever shall so rare an object see!” | |
| But happy heart, if thoughts less happy were! | |
| For their delights have cost my heart full dear, | 5 |
| In whom of love a thousand causes be; | |
| And each cause breeds a thousand loves in me; | |
| And each love more than thousand hearts can bear. | |
| How can my heart so many loves then hold; | |
| Which yet, by heaps, increase from day to day? | 10 |
| But like a ship that’s o’ercharged with gold, | |
| Must either sink, or hurl the gold away. | |
| But hurl not love! Thou canst not, feeble heart! | |
| In thine own blood, thou therefore drownèd art! | | | | |
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