The Lover describeth his restless State. Songs and Sonnets. Sir Thomas Wyatt. 1880. The Poetical Works

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

Songs and Sonnets

The Lover describeth his restless State


THE FLAMING sighs that boil within my breast,
Sometime break forth, and they can well declare
The heart’s unrest, and how that it doth fare,
The pain thereof, the grief, and all the rest.
The water’d eyen from whence the tears do fall,	5
Do feel some force, or else they would be dry;
The wasted flesh of colour dead can try,
And sometime tell what sweetness is in gall:
And he that lust to see, and to discern
How care can force within a wearied mind,	10
Come he to me, I am that place assign’d:
But for all this, no force, it doth no harm;
The wound, alas, hap in some other place,
From whence no tool away the scar can raze.
But you, that of such like have had your part,	15
Can best be judge. Wherefore, my friend so dear,
I thought it good my state should now appear
To you, and that there is no great desert.
And whereas you, in weighty matters great,
Of fortune saw the shadow that you know,	20
For trifling things I now am stricken so,
That though I feel my heart doth wound and beat,
I sit alone, save on the second day
My fever comes, with whom I spend my time
In burning heat, while that she list assign.	25
And who hath health and liberty alway,
Let him thank God, and let him not provoke,
To have the like of this my painful stroke.