| Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904. | | | | Diana | The Fifth Decade
Sonnet I. Ay me, poor wretch! my prayer is turned to sin | | Henry Constable (1562–1613) |
| | | AY me, poor wretch! my prayer is turned to sin. | |
| I say, “I love!” My Mistress says, “’Tis lust!” | |
| Thus most we lose, where most we seek to win. | |
| Wit will make wicked what is ne’er so just. | |
| And yet I can supplant her false surmise. | 5 |
| Lust is a fire that, for an hour or twain, | |
| Giveth a scorching blaze, and then he dies: | |
| Love, a continual furnace doth maintain. | |
| A furnace! Well, this a furnace may be called; | |
| For it burns inward, yields a smothering flame, | 10 |
| Sighs which, like boiled lead’s smoking vapour, scald. | |
| I sigh apace, at echo of Sighs’ name. | |
| Long have I served. No short blaze is my love. | |
| Hid joys there are, that maids scorn till they prove. | | | | |
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