Louer's complaint (Quarto, 1609)

Author: William Shakespeare

Editor: Hardy M. Cook

Not Peer Reviewed

A Louers complaint.

WILLIAM SHAKE-SPEARE.

1FRom off a hill whose concaue wombe reworded,

¶A plaintfull story from a sistring vale

¶My spirrits t'attend this doble voyce accorded,

¶And downe I laid to list the sad tun'd tale,

5Ere long espied a fickle maid full pale

¶Tearing of papers breaking rings a twaine,

¶Storming her world with sorrowes, wind and raine.

¶Vpon her head a plattid hiue of straw,

¶Which fortified her visage from the Sunne,

10Whereon the thought might thinke sometime it saw

¶The carkas of a beauty spent and donne,

¶Time had not sithed all that youth begun,

¶Nor youth all quit, but spight of heauens fell rage,

¶Some beauty peept, through lettice of sear'd age.

15Oft did she heaue her Napkin to her eyne,

¶Which on it had conceited charecters:

¶Laundring the silken figures in the brine,

¶That seasoned woe had pelleted in teares,

¶And often reading what contents it beares:

20As often shriking vndistinguisht wo,

¶In clamours of all size both high and low.

¶Some-times her leueld eyes their carriage ride,

¶As they did battry to the spheres intend:

¶Sometime diuerted their poore balls are tide,

25To th'orbed earth ;sometimes they do extend,

¶Their view right on, anon their gases lend,

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