From Urania
By Lady Mary Wroth
Sweet solitariness, joy to those hearts
That feel the
leasure of love's sporting darts,
Grudge me not, though a vassal to his
might,
And a poor subject to curst changing's spite,
To rest in you, or rather restless move
In your contents to
sorrow for my love.
A love, which living lives as dead to me,
As holy
relics which in boxes be
Placed in a chest, that overthrows my
joy,
Shut up in change, which more than
plagues destroy.
These, O you solitariness, may both endure,
And be a chirurgeon to find me a
cure:
For this curst corsive eating my
best rest,
Memory, sad
memory in you once blessed,
But now most
miserable with the weight
Of that which only shows love's strange deceit,
You are that
cruel wound that inly wears
My soul, my body wasting into
tears.
You keep mine
eyes unclosed, my heart untied,
From letting thought of my best days to slide.
Froward remembrance, what
delight have you
Over my miseries to take a
view?
Why do you tell me in this same-like place
Of earth's best
blessing I have seen the face?
But masked from me, I only see the shade
Of that which once my brightest
sunshine made.
You tell me, that I then was
blessed in love,
When equal
passions did together move.
O why is this alone to bring
distress
Without a salve, but
torments in excess?