That you were once unkind befriends me now, And for that sorrow which I then did feel Needs must I under my transgression bow, Unless my nerves were brass or hammer’d steel.

For if you were by my unkindness shaken, As I by yours, you’ve pass’d a hell of time; And I, a tyrant, have no leisure taken To weigh how once I suffer’d in your crime.

O, that our night of woe might have remember’d My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits, And soon to you, as you to me then, tender’d The humble salve which wounded bosoms fits!

It's a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.

It follows the typical rhyme scheme of the form ABAB CDCD EFEF GG and is composed in iambic pentameter, a type of poetic metre based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions.