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Home  »  Elizabethan Sonnets  »  Sonnet XIII. My Cynthia hath the waters of mine eyes

Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.

Sonnets after Astrophel, etc.

Sonnet XIII. My Cynthia hath the waters of mine eyes

Samuel Daniel (1562–1619)

MY CYNTHIA hath the waters of mine eyes,

The ready handmaids on her Grace attending,

That never fall to ebb, nor ever die;

For to their flow she never grants an ending.

The Ocean never doth attend more duly

Upon his sovereign, the night wand’ring Queen;

Nor ever hath his impost paid more truly,

Than mine, to my soul’s Queen hath ever been.

Yet her hard rock, firm fixt for aye removing,

No comfort to my cares she ever giveth:

Yet had I rather languish in her loving,

Than to embrace the fairest she that liveth.

I fear to find such pleasure in my reigning;

As now I taste in compass of complaining.