Poetry Explorer


Classic and Contemporary Poetry


FRAGMENT OF A SONNET by PIERRE DE RONSARD

First Line: NATURE WITHHELD CASSANDRA IN THE SKIES
Last Line: LOVE POUR'D HER BEAUTY INTO MY WARM VEINS...

NATURE withheld Cassandra in the skies,
For more adornment, a full thousand years;
She took their cream of Beauty's fairest dyes,
And shap'd and tinted her above all Peers:
Meanwhile Love kept her dearly with his wings,
And underneath their shadow fill'd her eyes
With such a richness that the cloudy Kings
Of high Olympus utter'd slavish sighs.
When from the Heavens I saw her first descend,
My heart took fire, and only burning pains,
They were my pleasures--they my Life's sad end;
Love pour'd her beauty into my warm veins...



Home: PoetryExplorer.net