Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, MENAPHON'S SONG IN HIS BED, by ROBERT GREENE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MENAPHON'S SONG IN HIS BED, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: You restless cares, companions of the night
Last Line: "welcome sweet grief, the subject of my lays."
Subject(s): Grief; Sorrow; Sadness


YOU restless cares, companions of the night,
That wrap my joys in folds of endless woes,
Tire on my heart, and wound it with your spite,
Since love and fortune prove my equal foes:
Farewell my hopes, farewell my happy days;
Welcome sweet grief, the subject of my lays.

Mourn heavens, mourn earth; your shepherd is forlorn;
Mourn times and hours, since bale invades my bower;
Curse every tongue the place where I was born,
Curse every thought the life which makes me lour:
Farewell my hopes, farewell my happy days;
Welcome sweet grief, the subject of my lays.

Was I not free? was I not fancy's aim?
Fram'd not desire my face to front disdain?
I was; she did; but now one silly maim
Makes me to droop, as he whom love hath slain:
Farewell my hopes, farewell my happy days;
Welcome sweet grief, the subject of my lays.

Yet drooping, and yet living to this death,
I sigh, I sue for pity at her shrine,
Whose fiery eyes exhale my vital breath,
And make my flocks with parching heat to pine:
Farewell my hopes, farewell my happy days;
Welcome sweet grief, the subject of my lays.

Fade they, die I: long may she live to bliss,
That feeds a wanton fire with fuel of her form,
And makes perpetual summer where she is;
Whiles I do cry, o'ertook with envy's storm,
"Farewell my hopes, farewell my happy days;
Welcome sweet grief, the subject of my lays."





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