Beneath this gloomy shade, <br />By Nature only for my sorrows made, <br />I'll spend this voyce in crys, <br />In tears I'll waste these eyes <br /> <br />By Love so vainly fed; <br />So Lust of old the Deluge punished. <br />Ah wretched youth! said I, <br />'Ah, wretched youth!' twice did I sadly cry: <br />'Ah, wretched youth!' the fields and floods reply. <br /> <br />When thoughts of Love I entertain, <br />I meet no words but 'Never,' and 'In vain.' <br />'Never' alas that dreadful name <br />Which fuels the infernal flame: <br /> <br />'Never,' My time to come must waste; <br />'In vain,' torments the present and the past. <br />'In vain, in vain!' said I; <br />'In vain, in vain!' twice did I sadly cry; <br />'In vain, in vain!' the fields and floods reply. <br /> <br />No more shall fields or floods do so; <br />For I to shades more dark and silent go: <br />All this world's noise appears to me <br />A dull ill-acted comedy: <br /> <br />No comfort to my wounded sight, <br />In the suns busy and imperti'nent Light. <br />Then down I laid my head; <br />Down on cold earth; and for a while was dead, <br />And my freed soul to a strange somewhere fled. <br /> <br />'Ah, sottish Soul' said I, <br />When back to its cage again I saw it fly; <br />'Fool to resume her broken chain! <br />And row her galley here again!' <br /> <br />'Fool, to that body to return <br />Where it condemn'd and destin'd is to burn! <br />Once dead, how can it be, <br />Death should a thing so pleasant seem to thee, <br />That thou should'st come to live it o're again in me?'<br /><br />Abraham Cowley<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-despair/
