dots-menu
×

Home  »  Elizabethan Sonnets  »  Sonnet XXIX. Earth! take this earth wherein my spirits languish!

Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.

Fidessa

Sonnet XXIX. Earth! take this earth wherein my spirits languish!

Bartholomew Griffin (d. 1602)

EARTH! take this earth wherein my spirits languish!

Spirits, leave this earth that doth in griefs retain!

Griefs, chase this earth, that it may fade with anguish!

Spirits, avoid these furies which do pain you!

O leave your loathsome prison! Freedom, gain you!

Your essence is divine! Great is your power!

And yet you moan your wrongs and sore complain you,

Hoping for joy, which fadeth every hour!

O Spirits, your prison loathe, and freedom gain you!

The Destinies, in deep laments, have shut you,

Of mortal hate! because they do disdain you!

And yet of joy that they in prison put you.

Earth, take this earth with thee to be enclosed!

Life is to me, and I to it, opposed!