Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.

Sonnets after Astrophel, etc.

Sonnet XXVII. Raising my hope on hills of high desire

Samuel Daniel (1562–1619)

RAISING my hope on hills of high desire,

Thinking to scale the heaven of her heart;

My slender mean presumes too high a part:

For DISDAIN’s thunderbolt made me retire,

And threw me down to pain in all this fire.

Where lo, I languish in so heavy smart

Because th’attempt was far above my art:

Her state brooks not poor souls should come so nigh her.

Yet I protest my high aspiring will

Was not to dispossess her of her right:

Her sovereignty should have remainèd still,

I only sought the bliss to have her sight.

Her sight contented thus to see me spill,

Framed my desires fit for her eyes to kill.