SONNET XXV.
To hear the impost of a faith not feigning,
That duty pays, and her disdain extorteth:
These bear the message of my woeful paining,
These olive branches mercy still exhorteth.
These tributary plaints with chaste desires,
I send those eyes, the cabinets of love;
The paradise whereto my soul aspires,
From out this hell, which my afflictions prove:
Wherein, poor soul! I live exiled from mirth,
Pensive alone, none but despair about me.
My joys' liberties perished in their birth,
My cares long lived, and will not die without me.
What shall I do, but sigh and wail the while;
My martyrdom exceeds the highest style.
SONNET XXVI.
I once may I see, when years may wreck my wrong,
And golden hairs may change to silver wire;
And those bright rays (that kindle all this fire)
Shall fail in force, their power not so strong.
Her beauty, now the burden of my song,
Whose glorious blaze the world's eye doth admire;
Must yield her praise to tyrant TIME'S desire:
Then fades the flower, which fed her pride so long.
When if she grieve to gaze her in her glass,
Which then presents her winter-withered hue:
Go you my verse! go tell her what she was!
For what she was, she best may find in you.
Your fiery heat lets not her glory pass,
But Phoenix-like to make her live anew.
