title: Shakespeare Select Poetry of Love: Compliments, Come-Ons, and Insights into the Art of Love (Box-O-Literary-Candy)
author:  Eve Adamson 
description: <B>Eve Adamson</B> is a <I>New York Times</I> bestselling author and freelance writer who lives, works, parents, cooks, practices yoga, and obsesses about food in Iowa City. Find out more at www.eveadamson.com.
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  A Lover's Complaint  
    
  
  
  This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com
  
  
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  # A Lover's Complaint
  
  
  ### William Shakespeare
  
  
  
  
  
  This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com  
    
    
    
    
  
  
  From off a hill whose concave womb re-worded  
  
  
  A plaintful story from a sistering vale,  
  
  
  My spirits to attend this double voice accorded,  
  
  
  And down I laid to list the sad-tun'd tale;  
  
  
  Ere long espied a fickle maid full pale,  
  
  
  Tearing of papers, breaking rings a-twain,  
  
  
  Storming her world with sorrow's wind and rain.  
    
  
  
  Upon her head a platted hive of straw,  
  
  
  Which fortified her visage from the sun,  
  
  
  Whereon the thought might think sometime it saw  
  
  
  The carcase of a beauty spent and done.  
  
  
  Time had not scythed all that youth begun,  
  
  
  Nor youth all quit; but, spite of Heaven's fell rage  
  
  
  Some beauty peeped through lattice of sear'd age.  
    
  
  
  Oft did she heave her