The Self-Banished

1 It is not that I love you less,
  Than when before your feet I lay;
  But to prevent the sad increase
  Of hopeless love, I keep away.

2 In vain, alas! for everything
  Which I have known belong to you,
  Your form does to my fancy bring,
  And makes my old wounds bleed anew.

3 Who in the spring, from the new sun,
  Already has a fever got,
  Too late begins those shafts to shun,
  Which Phoebus through his veins has shot;

4 Too late he would the pain assuage,
  And to thick shadows does retire;
  About with him he bears the rage,
  And in his tainted blood the fire.

5 But vow’d I have, and never must
  Your banish’d servant trouble you;
  For if I break, you may mistrust
  The vow I made—to love you too.