| |
| WHEN raging love with extreme pain | |
| Most cruelly distrains my heart; | |
| When that my tears, as floods of rain, | |
| Bear witness of my woful smart; | |
| When sighs have wasted so my breath | 5 |
| That I lie at the point of death: | |
| |
| I call to mind the navy great | |
| That the Greeks brought to Troy town: | |
| And how the boisterous winds did beat | |
| Their ships, and rent their sails adown; | 10 |
| Till Agamemnon’s daughter’s blood | |
| Appeas’d the Gods that them withstood. | |
| |
| And how that in those ten years war | |
| Full many a bloody deed was done; | |
| And many a lord that came full far, | 15 |
| There caught his bane, alas! too soon; | |
| And many a good knight overrun, | |
| Before the Greeks had Helen won. | |
| |
| Then think I thus: ‘Sith such repair, | |
| So long time war of valiant men, | 20 |
| Was all to win a lady fair, | |
| Shall I not learn to suffer then? | |
| And think my life well spent to be, | |
| Serving a worthier wight than she?’ | |
| |
| Therefore I never will repent, | 25 |
| But pains contented still endure; | |
| For like as when, rough winter spent, | |
| The pleasant spring straight draweth in ure; | |
| So after raging storms of care, | |
| Joyful at length may be my fare. | 30 |
| |
