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Home  »  Elizabethan Sonnets  »  XXVI. “Say, gentle friend, tell me in courtesy

Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.

Laura—Part II

XXVI. “Say, gentle friend, tell me in courtesy

Robert Tofte (1561–1620)

“SAY, gentle friend, tell me in courtesy,

Before what was I? and what am I now?

A senseless Shadow, or a Body, I?”

“Neither of both. Mark, and I’ll tell thee how.

No Body now: for that, by proud disdain

Of scornful She, dislived was. Shadow none;

For that did underground go with the same,

Unwilling it should wander all alone.”

“What am I then?” “Even one that doth not know

What now he is: or what he was, can show.”