DANIEL, Samuel

Delia XLVI: Let others sing

Let others sing of knights and paladines

In aged accents and untimely words;

Paint shadows in imaginary lines

Which well the reach of their high wits records:

But I must sing of thee, and those fair eyes

Authentic shall my verse in time to come,

When yet th' unborn shall say, "Lo where she lies

Whose beauty made him speak that else was dumb."

These are the arks, the trophies I erect,

That fortify thy name against old age;

And these thy sacred virtues must protect

Against the dark, and time's consuming rage.

Though th' error of my youth they shall discover,

Suffice they show I liv'd and was thy lover.

Sonnet XLVII: Read in My Face

Read in my face a volume of despairs,

The wailing Iliads of my tragic woe,

Drawn with my blood and printed with my cares

Wrought by her hand, that I have honor’d so.

Who, whilst I burn, she sings at my soul’s wrack,

Looking aloft from turret of her pride;

There my soul’s tyrant joys her in the sack

Of her own seat, whereof I made her guide.

There do these smokes that from affliction rise,

Serve as an incense to a cruel Dame;

A sacrifice thrice grateful to her eyes,

Because their power serve to exact the same.

Thus ruins she, to satisfy her will,

The Temple where her name was honor’d still.