Classic Poem

CCLXII

Love hath again
Put me to pain
And yet all is but lost.
I serve in vain
And am certain
Of all misliked most.

Both heat and cold
Doth so me hold
And cumbers so my mind
That, when I should
Speak and be bold,
It draweth me still behind.

My wits be past,
My life doth waste,
My comfort is exiled.
And I in haste
Am like to taste
How love hath me beguiled.

Unless that right
May in her sight
Obtain pity and grace,
Why should a wight
Have beauty bright
If mercy have no place?

Yet I, alas,
Am in such case
That back I cannot go
But still forth trace
A patient pace
And suffer secret woe.

For with the wind
My fired mind
Doth still increase in flame.
And she unkind
That did me bind
Doth turn it all to game.

Yet can no pain
Make me refrain
Nor here nor there to range.
I shall retain
Hope to attain
A heart that is so strange.

But I require
The painful fire
That oft doth make me sweat
For all my hire
With like desire
To give her heart a heat.

Then shall she prove
How I her love
And what I have her offered,
Which should her move
For to remove
The pain that I have suffered.

A better fee
Than she gave me
She shall of me attain;
For whereas she
Showed cruelty
She shall my heart obtain.