The histories and poems of Shakespeare Author:William Shakespeare Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A LOVER'S COMPLAINT INTRODUCTION This poem follows Shakespeare's Sonnets in the first edition, the quarto of 1609. It is there expressly ascribed to ' Will... more »iam Shako-speare '. There appears to be no good reason to question the correctness of this ascription, but we are without evidence as to the date when the poem was written. It has been suggested by Professor Gollancz that we have here ' an early exercise in the Spenserian style ', and he compares the opening lines of Spenser's The Ruins of Time with the opening of A Lover's Complaint. If the suggestion of the weeping woman came from Spenser we are carried back to a French original, for in Spenser's Visions of Bellay we find lines which seem to have inspired those that form the opening stanzas of The Ruins of Time. No original for the story, told by the deserted lover is known, but the theme is common to the poetry aof unhappy love. A LOVER'S COMPLAINT From off a hill whose concave womb re-worded A plaintful story from a sistering vale, My spirits to attend this double voice accorded, And down I laid to list the sad-tun'd tale ; Ere long espied a fickle maid full pale, Tearing of papers, breaking rings a-twain, Storming her world with sorrow's wind and rain. Upon her head a platted hive of straw, 8 Which fortified her visage from the sun, Whereon the thought might think sometime it saw The carcass of a beauty spent and done : Time had not scythed all that youth begun, 12 Nor youth all quit; but, spite of heaven's fell rage, Some beauty peep'd through lattice of sear'd age. Oft did she heave her napkin to her eyne, Which on it had conceited characters, 16 Laundering the silken figures in the brine That season'd woe had pelleted in tears, And often reading what content it bears ; ...« less