Sonnets
SONNET IV
If I should pray this lady pitiless
That Mercy to her heart be no more foeman,
You’d call me clownish, vile, and say that no man
Was so past hope and filled with vanities.
Where find you now these novel cruelties?
For still you seem humility’s true leaven,
Wise and adorned, alert and subtle even,
And fashioned out in ways of gentleness?
My soul weeps through her sighs for grievous fear,
And all those sighs, which in the heart were found,
Deep drenched with tears do sobbing thence depart,
Then seems that on my mind there rains a clear
Image of a lady, thoughtful, bound
Hither to keep death-watch upon that heart.
23
