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Home  »  Elizabethan Sonnets  »  Sonnet XXXVI. O let my heart, my body, and my tongue

Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.

Fidessa

Sonnet XXXVI. O let my heart, my body, and my tongue

Bartholomew Griffin (d. 1602)

O LET my heart, my body, and my tongue

Bleed forth the lively streams of faith unfeigned!

Worship my saint, the gods and saints among!

Praise and extol her fair, that me hath pained!

O let the smoke of my suppressed Desire,

Raked up in ashes of my burning breast,

Break out at length, and to the clouds aspire,

Urging the heavens t’afford me rest!

But let my body naturally descend

Into the bowels of our common mother!

And to the very centre let it wend,

When it no lower can, her griefs to smother!

And yet when I so low do buried lie;

Then shall my love ascend unto the sky!