By Samuel Daniel

When men shall find thy flower, thy glory, pass,
And thou with careful brow sitting alone
Received hast this message from thy glass,
That tells thee truth and says that all is gone:
Fresh shalt thou see in me the wounds thou madest,
Though spent thy flame, in me the heat remaining;
I that have lov’d thee thus before thou fadest,
My faith shall wax when thou art in thy waning.
The world shall find this miracle in me,
That fire can burn when all the matter’s spent;
Then what my faith hath been thyself shall see,
And that thou wast unkind thou mayst repent.
Thou mayst repent that thou hast scorn’d my tears,
When winter snows upon thy golden hairs.

Poet Bio

Samuel Daniel was born in Somersetshire in 1562 or 1563, and little is known of his early life. Daniel’s seriousness, quietness, restraint, dignity, reflectiveness, sober-mindedness, preference for the abstract and general are qualities in much of his nondramatic poetry.  See More By This Poet