Lo, what new pleasure human wits devise! For oftentimes one loves Whatever new thing moves The sighs, that will in closest order go; And I'm of those whom sorrowing behoves; And that with some success I labour, you may guess, When eyes with tears, and heart is brimmed with woe. In Sonnet 190: My chiefest pleasure now is making moan. Oh world, oh fruitless thought, Oh luck, my luck, who'st led me thus for spite!... For loving well, with pain I'm rent.... Nor can I yet repent, My heart o'erflowed with deadly pleasantness. Now wait I from no less A foe than dealt me my first blow, my last. And were I slain full fast, 'Twould seem a sort of mercy to my mind.... My ode, I shall i' the field Stand firm; to perish flinching were a shame, In fact, myself I blame For such laments; my portion is so sweet. Tears, sighs, and death I greet. O reader that of death the servant art, Earth can no weal, to match my woes, impart. His poems are full of scenes and comparisons from Nature; for the sympathy for her which goes with this modern and sentimental tone is a deep one: In that sweet season of my age's prime Which saw the sprout and, as it were, green blade Of the wild passion.... Changed me From living man into green laurel whose Array by winter's cold no leaf can lose. (Ode 1.) Love is that by which My darknesses were made as bright As clearest noonday light. (Ode 4.) Elsewhere it is the light of heaven breaking in his heart, and springtime which brings the flowers. In Sonnet 44 he plays with impossibilities, like the Greek and Roman poets: Ah me! the sea will have no waves, the snow Will warm and darken, fish on Alps will dwell, And suns droop yonder, where from common cell The springs of Tigris and Euphrates flow, Or ever I shall here have truce or peace Or love.... and uses the same comparisons, Sestina 7: So many creatures throng not ocean's wave, So many, above the circle of the moon, Of stars were never yet beheld by night; So many birds reside not in the groves; So many herbs hath neither field nor shore, But my heart's thoughts outnumber them each eve. Many of his poems witness to the truth that the love-passion is the best interpreter of Nature, especially in its woes. The woes of love are his constant theme, and far more eloquently expressed than its bliss: So fair I have not seen the sun arise, When heaven was clearest of all cloudy stain-- The welkin-bow I have not after rain Seen varied with so many shifting dyes, But that her aspect in more splendid guise Upon the day when I took up Love's chain Diversely glowed, for nothing mortal vies Therewith.... (Sonnet 112.)