Farewell, fond love

Farewell, fond love, under whose childish whip

I have served out a weary 'prenticeship.

Farewell, thou that hast made me thy scorned property

To dote on those that love not, and to fly

Love that wooed me. Go, bane of my content,

And practise on some other patient.

Farewell, false hopes that fanned my warm desire

Till it had raised a wild, unruly fire

Which nor sighs could nor tears extinguish can.

Although my eyes outflow the ocean.

Forth from my thoughts forever, things of air.

Begun in error, finished in despair.

Farewell, false world, upon whose restless stage

'Twixt love and hope I have fooled out an age.

Ere I will seek to thee for my redress

l'll woo the wind and court the wilderness,

And buried from the day's discovery,

Find out some slow but certain way to die.

My woeful monument shall be my cell,

The murmur of the purling brook my kneli;

And for my epitaph thec rocks shall groan

Eternally. lf any ask this stone

What wretched thing doth in this compass lie,

The hollow echo shall reply, 'Tis I.