Classic Poem

All heavy minds
Do seek to ease their charge,
And that that most them binds
To let at large.

Then why should I
Hold pain within my heart,
And may my tune apply,
To ease my smart?

My faithful lute
Alone shall hear me plain;
For else all other suit
Is clean in vain.

For where I sue
Redress of all my grief,
Lo, they do most eschew
My heart's relief.

Alas, my dear,
Have I deserved so?
That no help may appear
Of all my woe?

Whom speak I to,
Unkind and deaf of ear?
Alas, lo, I go,
And wot not where.

Where is my thought?
Where wanders my desire?
Where may the thing be sought
That I require?

Light in the wind
Doth flee all my delight;
Where truth and faithful mind
Are put to flight.

Who shall me give
Feath'red wings for to flee,
The thing that doth me grieve
That I may see?

Who would go seek
The cause whereby to pain?
Who could his foe beseek
For ease of pain?

My chance doth so
My woful case procure,
To offer to my foe
My heart to cure.

What hope I then
To have any redress?
Of whom or where or when
Who can express?

No since despair
Hath set me in this case,
In vain oft in the air
To say Alas!

I seek no thing
But thus for to discharge
My heart of sore sighing,
To plain at large,

And with my lute
Sometime to ease my pain:
For else all other suit
Is clean in vain.