On Monsieur's Departure

On Monsieur's Departure

Original Text
Bodleian Library MS. Tanner 76, fol. 162. Poems, ed. Leicester Bradner (Providence, R.I., Brown University Press, 1964): 5, 73-74.
1I grieve and dare not show my discontent,
2I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,
3I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,
4I seem stark mute but inwardly do prate.
5    I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned,
6    Since from myself another self I turned.
7My care is like my shadow in the sun,
8Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,
9Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done.
10His too familiar care doth make me rue it.
11    No means I find to rid him from my breast,
12    Till by the end of things it be supprest.
13Some gentler passion slide into my mind,
14For I am soft and made of melting snow;
15Or be more cruel, love, and so be kind.
16Let me or float or sink, be high or low.
17    Or let me live with some more sweet content,
18    Or die and so forget what love ere meant.
Publication Start Year
1582
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
RPO 1996-2000.
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