Samuel Daniel Poems

And yet I cannot reprehend the flight,
Or blame th'attempt presuming so to soar;
The mounting venture for a high delight
Did make the honor of the fall the more.
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XLVI
Let others sing of knights and paladines
In aged accents and untimely words;
Paint shadows in imaginary lines
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My spotless love hovers with white wings
About the temple of the proudest frame,
Where blaze those lights fairest of earthly things
Which clear our clouded world with brightest flame.
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Since the first look that led me to this error,
To this thought's-maze, to my confusion tending,
Still have I liv'd in grief, in hope, in terror,
The circle of my sorrows never ending.
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Lo, here the impost of a faith unfeigning
That love hath paid, and her disdain extorted,
Behold the message of my just complaining
That shows the world how much my grief imported.
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Tears, vows, and prayers win the hardest heart:
Tears, vows, and prayers have I spent in vain;
Tears cannot soften flint, nor vows convert;
Prayers prevail not with a quaint disdain.
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Oft and in vain my rebel thoughts have ventur'd
To stop the passage of my vanquisht heart,
And shut those ways my friendly foe first enter'd,
Hoping thereby to free my better part.
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Thou canst not die whilst any zeal abound
In feeling hearts that can conceive these lines;
Though thou a Laura hast no Petrarch found,
In base attire, yet clearly Beauty shines.
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Like as the lute that joys or else dislikes
As in his art that plays upon the same,
So sounds my Muse according as she strikes
On my heart strings high tun'd unto her fame.
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Whilst youth and error led my wand'ring mind
And set my thoughts in heedless ways to range,
All unawares a goddes chaste I find,
Diana-like, to work my sudden change.
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