I
My love is of a birth as rare 
As ’tis for object strange and high:
It was begotten by Despair 
Upon Impossibility. 

                     II
Magnanimous Despair alone 
Could show me so divine a thing,
Where feeble Hope could ne’er have flown, 
But vainly flapped its tinsel wing. 

                     III
And yet I quickly might arrive 
Where my extended soul is fixed, 
But Fate does iron wedges drive, 
And always crowds itself betwixt. 

                     IV
For Fate with jealous eye does see 
Two perfect loves, nor lets them close:
Their union would her ruin be, 
And her tyrannic power depose. 

                     V
And therefore her decrees of steel 
Us as the distant poles have placed, 
(Though love’s whole world on us doth wheel) 
Not by themselves to be embraced:

                     VI
Unless the giddy heaven fall, 
And earth some new convulsion tear; 
And, us to join, the world should all 
Be cramped into a planisphere. 

                     VII
As lines, so loves oblique may well 
Themselves in every angle greet: 
But ours so truly parallel, 
Though infinite, can never meet. 

                     VIII
Therefore the love which us doth bind, 
But Fate so enviously debars, 
Is the conjunction of the mind, 
And opposition of the stars.