LX.
When my good angel guides me to the place
Where all my good I do in STELLA see;
That heaven of joys throws only down on me
Thundered disdains and lightnings of disgrace.
But when the rugged'st step of Fortune's race
Makes me fall from her sight; then sweetly she
With words—wherein the Muses' treasures be—
Shows love and pity to my absent case.
Now I—wit-beaten long by hardest Fate—
So dull am, that I cannot look into
The ground of this fierce love and lovely hate.
Then some good body tell me how I do!
Whose presence, absence; absence, presence is:
Blessed in my curse, and cursèd in my bliss.
LXI.
Oft with true sighs, oft with uncallèd tears,
Now with slow words, now with dumb eloquence;
I STELLA'S eyes assailed, invade her ears:
But this, at last, is her sweet breathed defence.
"That who indeed infelt affection bears,
So captives to his saint both soul and sense;
That wholly hers, all selfness he forbears:
Thence his desires he learns, his life's course thence."
Now since her chaste mind hates this love in me:
With chastened mind, I needs must show that she
Shall quickly me from what she hates, remove.
O Doctor CUPID! thou for me, reply!
Driven else to grant by angel's sophistry,
That I love not, without I leave to love.
