English Poetry I: From Chaucer to Gray.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14. |
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| 100. Love’s Perjuries |
| | | William Shakespeare (1564–1616) |
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| ON a day, alack the day! | |
| Love, whose month is ever May, | |
| Spied a blossom passing fair | |
| Playing in the wanton air; | |
| Through the velvet leaves the wind, | 5 |
| All unseen, ’gan passage find; | |
| That the lover, sick to death, | |
| Wish’d himself the heaven’s breath. | |
| Air, quoth he, thy cheeks may blow; | |
| Air, would I might triumph so! | 10 |
| But, alack, my hand is sworn | |
| Ne’er to pluck thee from thy thorn: | |
| Vow, alack, for youth unmeet; | |
| Youth so apt to pluck a sweet. | |
| Do not call it sin in me | 15 |
| That I am forsworn for thee: | |
| Thou for whom e’en Jove would swear | |
| Juno but an Ethiope were, | |
| And deny himself for Jove, | |
| Turning mortal for thy love. | 20 |
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