| Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904. | | | | Diana | The Sixth Decade
Sonnet II. To live in hell, and heaven to behold | | Henry Constable (1562–1613) |
| | | 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 tread a maze that never shall have end; | 5 |
| 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; | 10 |
| 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. | | | | |
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