Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503–42). The Poetical Works. 1880.

Odes

The Lover prayeth that his Lady’s Heart might be inflamed with equal Affection

LOVE doth again

Put me to pain,

And yet all is but lost.

I serve in vain,

And am certain,

Of all misliked most.

Both heat and cold

Doth so me hold,

And comber so my mind;

That whom I should

Speak and behold,

It driveth me still behind.

My wits be past,

My life doth waste,

My comfort is exiled;

And I in haste,

Am like to taste

How love hath me beguiled.

Unless that right

May in her sight

Obtain pity and grace;

Why should a wight

Have beauty bright,

If mercy have no place.

Yet I, alas!

Am in such case;

That back I cannot go;

But still forth trace

A patient pace,

And suffer secret woe.

For with the wind

My fired mind

Doth still inflame;

And she unkind

That did me bind,

Doth turn it all to game.

Yet can no pain

Make me refrain,

Nor here and there to range;

I shall retain

Hope to obtain

Her heart that is so strange.

But I require

The painful fire,

That oft doth make me sweat;

For all my ire,

With like desire,

To give her heart a heat.

Then she shall prove

How I her love,

And what I have offer’d;

Which should her move,

For to remove

The pains that I have suffer’d.

And better fee

Than she gave me,

She shall of me attain;

For whereas she

Shewed cruelty,

She shall my heart obtain.