Love Is a Sour Delight

Love is a sour delight; a sug'red grief
A living death; an ever-dying life
A breach of Reason's law; a secret thief
A sea of tears; an ever-lasting strife
A bait for fools; a scourge of noble wits
A Deadly wound; a shot which ever hits.
Love is a blinded God; an angry boy
A Labyrinth of doubts; an idle lust
A slave to Beauty's will; a witless toy
A ravening bird, a tyrant most unjust
A burning heat; a cold; a flattering foe
A private hell; a very world of woe.
Yet mighty Love regard not what I say,
Which lie in trance bereft of all my wits,
But blame the light that leads me thus astray,
And makes my tongue blaspheme by frantic fits:
Yet hurt her not, left I sustain the smart,
Which am content to lodge her in my heart.

-Thomas Watson: Hekatompathia, or Passionate Centurie of Love, Sonnet XVIII (1582)