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)

Sonnet 8

I live, I Die. I drown and I burn.
I shiver with cold and perish with heat.
I leap from anguish to delight; from sweet
To bitter. No two moments are the same.

Suddenly my laughter and my cries
Join in a single instant, each pleasure
Aches with a hidden torment, and the night
Fades, yet endures. I wither and I bloom.

So Love leads me on forever.
And when I think I know the limits of pain
Without knowing, I find myself at peace.

When I think my joy is lasting and I see
Some future hope, some present certainty,
He returns and brings back the past again.

-Louise Labé (1525-1565): Sonnet 8
(transl. Richard A. Branyon)