THE RIME SPARSE - DURING THE LIFE OF LADY LAURA
I.
You who hear within my scattered verse
the troubled sighs on which I fed my heart
in youthful error, now that I in part
am someone other than I was at first;
for all the varied ways I cry and curse
amid the empty hope and wasted art,
I ask that those who suffer by Love’s dart
may pardon me, and pity me my worst.
But now when I reflect on how I became
a common tale to all, it brings me grief,
so that I grow ashamed that now it seems
the fruit of all my wandering is shame,
and true repentance, and the clear belief
that what the world adores are fleeting dreams.
