dots-menu
×

Home  »  Elizabethan Sonnets  »  Sonnet L. When I the hooks of pleasure first devoured

Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.

Fidessa

Sonnet L. When I the hooks of pleasure first devoured

Bartholomew Griffin (d. 1602)

WHEN I the hooks of pleasure first devoured,

Which undigested, threaten now to choke me;

Fortune on me, her golden graces showered:

O then Delight did to delight provoke me!

Delight, false instrument of my decay!

Delight the nothing that doth all things move;

Made me first wander from the perfect way,

And fast entangled me in the snares of love.

Then my unhappy happiness, at first, began,

Happy in that I loved the fairest Fair;

Unhappily despised, a hapless man:

Thus Joy did triumph! Triumph did despair!

My conquest is, which shall the conquest gain?

FIDESSA, author both of joy and pain!