| |
| ALAS! the grief, and deadly woful smart, | |
| The careful chance, shapen afore my shert, | |
| The sorrowful tears, the sighs hot as fire, | |
| That cruel love hath long soked from my heart! | |
| And for reward of over great desire | 5 |
| Disdainful doubleness have I, for my hire. | |
| O! lost service! O pain ill rewarded! | |
| O! pitiful heart! with pain enlarged! | |
| O! faithful mind! too suddenly assented! | |
| Return, alas! sithens thou art not regarded. | 10 |
| Too great a proof of true faith presented, | |
| Causeth by right such faith to be repented. | |
| O cruel causer of undeserved change, | |
| By great desire unconstantly to range, | |
| Is this your way for proof of steadfastness? | 15 |
| Perdie! you know, the thing was not so strange, | |
| By former proof too much my faithfulness; | |
| What needeth then such coloured doubleness? | |
| I have wailed thus, weeping in nightly pain, | |
| In sobs, and sighs, alas! and all in vain, | 20 |
| In inward plaint, and hearts woful torment. | |
| And yet, alas! lo! cruelty and disdain | |
| Have set at nought a faithful true intent, | |
| And price hath privilege truth to prevent. | |
| But though I starve, and to my death still mourn | 25 |
| And piecemeal in pieces though I be torn; | |
| And though I die, yielding my wearied ghost, | |
| Shall never thing again make me return. | |
| I wite thou …. of that that I have lost | |
| To whom so ever lust for to prove most. | 30 |
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