Sonetto -

What thing is Love? It is a power divine

That reigns in us, or else a wreakful law

That dooms our minds to beauty to incline:

It is a star, whose influence doth draw

Our heart to Love, dissembling of his might

Till he be master of our hearts and sight.

Love is a discord, and a strange divorce

Betwixt our sense and reason, by whose power,

As mad with reason, we admit that force

Which wit or labour never may devour:

It is a will that brooketh no consent;

It would refuse, yet never may repent.

Love's a desire, which for to wait a time,

Doth lose an age of years, and so doth pass,

As doth the shadow, sever'd from his prime,

Seeming as though it were, yet never was;

Leaving behind nought but repentant thoughts

Of days ill spent, for that which profits noughts.

It's now a peace, and then a sudden war;

A hope consum'd before it is conceiv'd;

At hand it fears, and menaceth afar;

And he that gains is most of all deceiv'd:

It is a secret hidden and now known,

Which one may better feel than write upon.

When Neptune, riding on the southern seas,

Shall from the bosom of his leman yield

Th' Arcadian wonder, men and gods to please.

Plenty in pride shall march amidst the field;

Dead men shall war, and unborn babes shall frown,

And with their falchions hew their foemen down.

When lambs have lions for their surest guide,

And planets rest upon th' Arcadian hills,

When swelling seas have neither ebb nor tide,

When equal banks the ocean-margin fills;

Then look, Arcadians, for a happy time,

And sweet content within your troubled clime.