Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg
Ye wastful woodes (embedded Sestina), Edmund Spenser
Ye wastful Woods bear witness of my Woe,
Wherein my Plaints did oftentimes resound;
Ye careless Birds are privy to my Cryes,
Which in your Songs were wont to make a part:
Thou pleasant Spring hast lull'd me oft asleep,
Whose streams my trickling rears did oft augment.
Resort of People doth my Grief augment,
The walled Towns do work my greater Woe:
The Forest wide is fitter to resound
The hollow Eccho of my careful Cryes;
I hate the House, since thence my Love did part,
Whose wailful Want debars mine Eyes of sleep.
Let Streams of Tears supply the place of Sleep:
Let all that sweet is, void; and all that may augment
My Dole, draw near. More meet to wail my Woe,
Been the wild Woods, my Sorrows to resound,
Than Bed, nor Bower, both which I fill with Cryes,
When I them see so waste, and find no part
Of pleasure past. Here will I dwell apart
In gastful Grove therefore, till my last Sleep
Do close mine Eyes: so shall I not augment
With sight of such as change my restless Woe.
Help me, ye baneful Birds, whose shrieking sound
Is sign of dreery Death, my deadly Cryes
Most ruthfully to tune. And as my Cryes
(Which of my Woe cannot bewray least part)
You hear all Night, when Nature craveth Sleep,
Increase, so let your yrksome Yelles augment.
Thus all the Night in Plaints, the Day in Woe,
I vowed have to waste, till safe and sound
She home return, whose Voice's silver Sound
To chearful Songs can change my chearless Cryes.
Hence, with the Nightingale will I take part,
That blessed Bird, that spends her time of sleep
In Songs and plaintive Pleas, the more t' augment
The memory of his Misdeed, that bred her Woe.
And you that feel no Woe, when as the Sound
Of these my nightly Cryes ye hear apart,
Let break your sounder Sleep, and Pity augment.
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