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III - My flocks feed not
My flocks feed not,
My ewes breed not,
My rams speed not,
All is amiss:
Love is dying,
Faith's defying,
Heart's denying,
Causer of this.
All my merry jigs are quite forgot,
All my lady's love is lost, God wot:
Where her faith was firmly fix'd in love,
There a nay is plac'd without remove.
One silly cross
Wrought all my loss;
O frowning Fortune, cursed, fickle dame!
For now I see,
Inconstancy
More in women than in men remain.
In black mourn I,
All fears scorn I,
Love bath forlorn me,
Living in thrall:
Heart is bleeding,
All help needing,
(O cruel speeding!)
Fraughted with gall.
My shepherd's pipe can sound no deal,
My wether's bell rings doleful knell;
My curtail dog, that wont to have play'd,
Plays not at all, but seems afraid;
With sighs so deep,
Procures to weep,
In howling-wise, to see my doleful plight.
How sighs resound
Through heartless ground,
Like a thousand vanquish'd men in bloody fight!
Clear wells spring not,
Sweet birds sing not,
Green plants bring not
Forth; they die;
Herds stand weeping,
Flocks all sleeping,
Nymphs back peeping
Fearfully.
All our pleasure known to us poor swains,
All our merry meetings on the plains,
All our evening sport from us is fled,
All our love is lost, for Love is dead.
Farewell, sweet lass,
Thy like ne'er was
For a sweet content, the cause of all my moan:
Poor Coridon
Must live alone,
Other help for him I see that there is none.
Content of III - My flocks feed not [William Shakespeare's poems: Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Music]
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Read next: IV - When as thine eye hath chose the dame
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