| Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904. | | | | Diana | The Fourth Decade
Sonnet VI. Each day, new proofs of new despair I find | | Henry Constable (1562–1613) |
| | | EACH day, new proofs of new despair I find, | |
| That is, new deaths. No marvel then, though I | |
| Make exile my last help; to th’end mine eye | |
| Should not behold the death to me assigned. | |
| Not that from death, absence might save my mind; | 5 |
| But that it might take death more patiently: | |
| Like him, the which by Judge condemned to die, | |
| To suffer with more ease, his eyes doth blind. | |
| Your lips, in scarlet clad, my Judges be, | |
| Pronouncing sentence of eternal “No!” | 10 |
| DESPAIR, the hangman that tormenteth me: | |
| The death I suffer is the life I have. | |
| For only life doth make me die in woe, | |
| And only death I, for my pardon crave. | | | | |
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