Sonnet XLI: Why Do I Speak of Joy

Portrait of Michael Drayton
Michael Drayton 1563–1631

Love's Lunacy

Why do I speak of joy, or write of love, When my heart is the very den of horror, And in my soul the pains of Hell I prove, With all his torments and infernal terror? What should I say? What yet remains to do? My brain is dry with weeping all too long, My sighs be spent in uttering my woe, And I want words wherewith to tell my wrong; But, still distracted in Love's lunacy, And, bedlam-like, thus raging in my grief, Now rail upon her hair, then on her eye, Now call her Goddess, then I call her thief, Now I deny her, then I do confess her, Now do I curse her, then again I bless her.

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