| Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904. | | | | Diella | | Sonnet XI. What She can be so cruel as my Love | | Richard Linche (fl. 1596–1601) |
| | | WHAT She can be so cruel as my Love, | |
| or bear a heart so pitiless as She? | |
| Whom love, looks, words, tears, prayers do not move; | |
| nor sighs, nor vows prevail to pity me. | |
| She calls my love, “a SINON to her heart!” | 5 |
| “my looks,” she saith, “are like the crocodile’s!” | |
| “My words the Sirens sing, with guileful art!” | |
| tears, “CIRCE’s floods!” sighs, vows, “deceitful guiles!” | |
| But my poor heart hath no interpreter | |
| but love, looks, words, tears, prayers, sighs, or vows! | 10 |
| Then must it die! sith She, my comforter, | |
| whate’er I do, nor liketh, nor allows. | |
| With TITIUS, thus the vulture Sorrow eats me! | |
| With steel-twigged rods, thus tyrant CUPID beats me! | | | | |
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