Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.
Parthenophil and ParthenopheElegy XX. O dear vexation of my troubled soul!
Barnabe Barnes (1569?–1609)O
My life, with grief, when wilt thou consumate?
The dear remembrance of my passing soul;
Mine heart, with some rests, hope doth animate.
How many have those conquering eyes subdued!
How many vanquished captives to thine heart!
Head iron-hearted Captains (when they viewed)
Were drawn, till they were wounded with thy dart!
O when, I, their haired bodies have beheld,
Their martial stomachs, and oft-wounded face;
Which bitter tumults and garboils foretelled;
In which, it seemed they found no coward’s place:
Then, I recalled how far Love’s power exceeds,
Above the bloody menace of rough war!
Where every wounded heart close inward bleeds;
And sudden pierced, with the twinkling of a star!
Then (when such iron-hearted Captains be,
To thine heart’s Bulwark, forcèd for to try
Which way to win that Fort by battery;
And how all Conquerors, there conquered lie!)
Methinks, thine heart, or else thine eyes be made
(Because they can such iron objects force)
Of hardest adamant! that men (which laid
Continual siege) be thralled, without remorse.
Thine heart, of adamant! because it takes
The hardest hearts, drawn prisoners unto thine.
Thine eye! because it, wounded many makes.
Yet no transpiercing beams can pierce those eyne!
Thine heart of adamant, which none can wound!
Thine eye of adamant, unpiercèd found!