Chapter C

When all the world would smile in summer time,
And bear the train of nature’s equipage;
And love appeareth, as an appanage,
To make each lover’s atmosphere sublime;
Then would I take this pen and form a rhyme,
That singeth of my three years’ vassalage
(Still held in love’s unwilling peonage),
That doth my spirit and my heart begrime.
For how could love exalt, which hath, for long,
Reduced me to so destitute a state
That through each winter I must nurse my wrong,
Until each spring shall bring thee, all too late?
And when the summer cometh, my sad song
Is only to deplore that I must wait.