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Home  »  Elizabethan Sonnets  »  Sonnet 44. Whilst thus my pen strives to eternize thee

Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.

Idea

Sonnet 44. Whilst thus my pen strives to eternize thee

Michael Drayton (1563–1631)

[First printed in 1599 (No. 43), and in all later editions.]

WHILST thus my pen strives to eternize thee,

Age rules my lines with wrinkles in my face;

Where, in the Map of all my Misery,

Is modelled out the World of my disgrace:

Whilst in despite of tyrannizing Times,

MEDEAlike, I make thee young again!

Proudly thou scorn’st my world-outwearing rhymes,

And murder’st Virtue with thy coy disdain!

And though in youth, my youth untimely perish,

To keep Thee from oblivion and the grave;

Ensuing Ages yet my Rhymes shall cherish,

Where I entombed, my better part shall save;

And though this earthly body fade and die,

My Name shall mount upon Eternity!