Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles: Idea, Fidesa and Chloris

Like an adventurous sea-farer am I,

Who hath some long and dang'rous voyage been,

And called to tell of his discovery,

How far he sailed, what countries he had seen,

Proceeding from the port whence he put forth,

Shows by his compass how his course he steered,

When east, when west, when south, and when by north,

As how the pole to every place was reared,

What capes he doubled, of what continent,

The gulfs and straits that strangely he had past,

Where most becalmed, where with foul weather spent,

And on what rocks in peril to be cast:

Thus in my love, time calls me to relate

My tedious travels and oft-varying fate.