| Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904. | | | | Diana | The Seventh Decade
Sonnet IV. When tedious much, and over weary long | | Henry Constable (1562–1613) |
| | | WHEN tedious much, and over weary long, | |
| Cruel disdain, reflecting from her brow, | |
| Hath been the cause that I endured such wrong; | |
| And rest thus discontent and weary now. | |
| Yet when posterity, in time to come, | 5 |
| Shall find th’uncancelled tenour of her vow; | |
| And her disdain be then confest of some, | |
| How much unkind and long, I find it now. | |
| O yet even then (though then, will be too late | |
| To comfort me; dead, many a day, ere then), | 10 |
| They shall confess—I did not force her heart: | |
| And time shall make it known to other men— | |
| That ne’er had her disdain made me despair, | |
| Had she not been so excellently fair. | | | | |
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