| Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904. | | | | Diana | The Seventh Decade
Sonnet VI. Thus long imposed to everlasting plaining | | Henry Constable (1562–1613) |
| | | THUS long imposed to everlasting plaining | |
| (Divinely constant to the worthiest Fair), | |
| And moved by eternally disdaining, | |
| Aye to persèver in unkind despair: | |
| Because now, Silence, wearily confined | 5 |
| In tedious dying, and a dumb restraint, | |
| Breaks forth in tears from mine unable mind | |
| To ease her passion by a poor complaint: | |
| O do not therefore to thyself suggest! | |
| That I can grieve, to have immured so long | 10 |
| Upon the matter of mine own unrest: | |
| Such grief is not the tenour of my song, | |
| That ’bide so zealously so bad a wrong. | |
| My grief is this. Unless I speak and plain me, | |
| Thou will persèver ever to disdain me. | 15 | | | |
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