So are you to my thoughts as food to life,
Or as sweet-season’d showers are to the ground;
And for the peace of you I hold such strife
As ’twixt a miser and his wealth is found.
Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon
Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure;
Now counting best to be with you alone,
Then better’d that the world may see my pleasure:
Sometime all full with feasting on your sight,
And by and by clean starved for a look;
Possessing or pursuing no delight,
Save what is had, or must from you be took.
Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day,
Or gluttoning on all, or all away.
In plain English
You sustain me the way food keeps a person alive, or the way rain nourishes the ground. But wanting you brings a strange kind of suffering—like a miser obsessed with his own money, proud one moment to have you, then terrified the next that time will steal you away.
I swing between extremes. Sometimes I'm happiest alone with you; sometimes I want the world to witness how much you mean to me. I feast on the sight of you until I'm full, then immediately starve for one more glance. Nothing else matters—only what I have from you right now, or what I'm desperate to get.
So I'm caught in this cycle, gorging and emptying myself over and over. Either I'm stuffed with you, or I'm left with nothing at all.
