Michael Drayton was an Elizabethan poet who mostly wrote sonnets in England as part of a rather up-and-down career and whose legacy has mostly languished in obscurity since his death in 1631. Drayton’s most famous cycle was titled Idea’s Mirror and contains a sonnet now known as “Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part.”
For those not in the now, an Elizabethan sonnet is made up of three quatrains—four-line stanzas—and a final couplet.
The first quatrain of this particular Drayton sonnet is as follows:
Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part.