tears
Have power, have worth, a marble mind to shake,
Whose fame no iron-age or time outwears.
Then lay you down in Phillis' lap and sleep,
Until the weeping read, and reading weep.

I

Oh pleasing thoughts, apprentices of love,
Fore-runners of desire, sweet mithridates
The poison of my sorrows to remove,
With whom my hopes and fear full oft debates!
Enrich yourselves and me by your self riches,
Which are the thoughts you spend on heaven-bred beauty,
Rouse you my muse beyond our poets' pitches,
And, working wonders, yet say all is duty!
Use you no eaglets' eyes, nor phoenix' feathers,
To tower the heaven from whence heaven's wonder sallies.
For why? Your sun sings sweetly to her weathers,
Making a spring of winter in the valleys.
Show to the world though poor and scant my skill is
How sweet thoughts be, that are but thought on Phillis!

II

You sacred sea-nymphs pleasantly disporting
Amidst this wat'ry world, where now I sail;
If ever love, or lovers sad reporting,
Had power sweet tears from your fair eyes to hail;
And you, more gentle-hearted than the rest,
Under the northern noon-stead sweetly streaming,
Lend those moist riches of your crystal crest,
To quench the flames from my heart's AEtna streaming;
And thou, kind Triton, in thy trumpet relish
The ruthful accents of my discontent,
That midst this travel desolate and hellish,
Some gentle wind that listens my lament
May prattle in the north in Phillis' ears:
"Where Phillis wants, Damon consumes in tears."

III

In fancy's world an Atlas have I been,
Where yet the chaos of my ceaseless care
Is by her eyes unpitied and unseen,
In whom all gifts but pity planted are;
For mercy though still cries my moan-clad muse,
And every paper that she sends to beauty,
In tract of sable tears brings woeful news,
Of my true heart-kind thoughts, and loyal duty.
But ah the strings of her hard heart are strained
Beyond the harmony of my desires;
And though the happy heavens themselves have pained,
To tame her heart whose will so far aspires,
Yet she who claims the title of world's wonder,
Thinks all deserts too base to bring her under.

IV

Long hath my sufferance laboured to enforce
One pearl of pity from her pretty eyes,
Whils