Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part,-- Nay I have done, you get no more of me; And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart, That thus so cleanly I myself can free; Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows, And when we meet at any time again, Be it not seen in either of our brows That we one jot of former love retain. Now at the last gasp of love's latest breath, When, his pulse failing, passion speechless lies, When faith is kneeling by his bed of death, And innocence is closing up his eyes, --Now if thou would'st, when all have given him over, From death to life thou might'st him yet recover! (DRAYTON: _Love's Farewell_. 1594.) Rossetti called this sonnet "perhaps the best in the language." Drayton's sonnet-sequence, the _Idea_, follows the Shaksperian form; and the present specimen illustrates how the important division of this type of sonnet is between the quatrains and the final couplet. One day I wrote her name upon the strand; But came the waves and washed it away: Again I wrote it with a second hand, But came the tide and made my pains his prey. Vain man! said she, that dost in vain essay A mortal thing so to immortalize; For I myself shall like to this decay, And eke my name be wiped out likewise. Not so (quoth I); let baser things devise To die in dust, but you shall live by fame; My verse your virtues rare shall eternize, And in the heavens write your glorious name,-- Where, whenas death shall all the world subdue, Our love shall live, and later life renew. (SPENSER: _Amoretti_, lxxv. 1595.) The sonnets in Spenser's collected poems number 177, of which fifty-six are in the common English (Surrey) form, the remainder--like the present specimen--riming _ababbcbccdcdee_. This order of rimes reminds us of that in the Spenserian stanza, and must have been devised by Spenser at about the same time. It has never been adopted by other poets. When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself and curse my fate; Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possest, Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee--and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate; For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings. (SHAKSPERE: _Sonnet_ xxix. 1609.)