[The Court of the Temple, Jerusalem, Model]from The Temple (1633), by George Herbert:

 

¶   The Answer.

My comforts drop and melt away like snow:
I shake my head, and all the thoughts and ends,
Which my fierce youth did bandie, fall and flow
Like leaves about me: or like summer friends,
Flyes of estates and sunne-shine. But to all,
Who think me eager, hot, and undertaking,
But in my prosecutions slack and small;
As a young exhalation, newly waking,
Scorns his first bed of dirt, and means the sky;
But cooling by the way, grows pursie1 and slow,
And setling to a cloud, doth live and die
In that dark state of tears: to all, that so
          Show me, and set me, I have one reply,
         Which they that know the rest, know more then I.


1 Pursie. Short windedness, breathless. (Oxford English Dictionary) [Return]

Note on Sonnet form and organization.


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