My sense is passion's spy;

My thoughts like ruins old,

Which show how fair the building was,

While grace did it uphold.

And still before mine eyes
My mortal fall they lay:

Whom grace and virtue once advanced,
Now sin hath cast away.

O thoughts, no thoughts, but wounds,
Sometime the seat of joy,
Sometime the store of quiet rest,
But now of all annoy.

I sowed the soil of peace;
My bliss was in the spring;
And day by day the fruit I ate,
That virtue's tree did bring.

To nettles now my corn,
My field is turned to flint,
Where I a heavy harvest reap
Of cares that never stint.

The peace, the rest, the life,
That I enjoyed of yore,

Were happy lot, but by their loss
My smart doth sting the more.

So to unhappy men

The best frames to the worst:
O time, O place, where thus I fell,
Dear then, but now accurst!

Behold, such is the end

That Pleasure doth procure;
Of nothing else but care and plaint
Can she the mind assure.

Forsaken first by Grace,

By Pleasure now forgotten,
Her pain I feel, but Grace's wage
Have others from me gotten.

Then, Grace, where is the joy That makes thy torments sweet? Where is the cause that many thought Their deaths through thee but meet?

Where thy disdain of sin,
Thy secret sweet delight,

Thy sparks of bliss, thy heavenly joys,
That shined erst so bright?

O that they were not lost,
Or I could it excuse!

O that a dream of feigned loss
My judgment did abuse!

O frail inconstant flesh,
Soon trapped in every gin!
Soon wrought thus to betray thy soul,
And plunge thyself in sin!

Yet hate I but the fault,
And not the faulty one,
Nor can I rid from me the mate
That forceth me to moan;

To moan a sinner's case,
Than which was never worse,
In prince or poor, in young or old,
In blest or full of curse.

Yet God's must I remain,
By death, by wrong, by shame;
I cannot blot out of my heart
That Grace writ in His name.

I cannot set at nought Whom I have held so dear; I cannot make Him seem afar, That is indeed so near.

Not that I look henceforth For love that erst I found ; Sith that I brake my plighted troth To build on fickle ground.

Yet that shall never fail

Which my faith bare in hand;
I gave my vow; my vow gave me ;
Both vow and gift shall stand.

But since that I have sinned,
And scourge none is too ill,
I yield me captive to my curse,
My hard fate to fulfil.

The solitary wood

My city shall become;

The darkest dens shall be my lodge; In which I rest or come;

A sandy plot my board,
The worms my feast shall be,
Wherewith my carcass shall be fed,
Until they feed on me.

My tears shall be my wine,
My bed a craggy rock.
My harmony the serpent's hiss,

The screeching owl my clock.

My exercise, remorse,

And doleful sinners' lays;

My book, remembrance of my crimes,

And faults of former days.

My walk, the path of plaint;
My prospect into hell,

Where Judas and his cursed crew
In endless pains do dwell.

And though I seem to use
The feigning poet's style,
To figure forth my careful plight,
My fall and
my exile ;

Yet is my grief not feigned,

Wherein I starve and pine;

Who feels the most shall think it least,
If his compare with mine.

ZHO grace for zenith had,

From which no shadows grow,
Who hath seen joy of all his hopes,
And end of all his woe;

Whose love beloved hath been
The crown of his desire;
Who hath seen sorrow's glories burnt
In sweet affection's fire;

If from this heavenly state,
Which souls with souls unites,
He be fallen down into the dark
Despaired war of sprites,

Let him lament with me;
For none doth glory know,
That hath not been above himself,

And thence fallen down to woe.

"Coelica," Sonnet LXXXIII, in Lord Brooke's "Works," 1683, pp. 228-233.