sad account of fore-bemoaned moan

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought 

I summon up remembrance of things past, 

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, 

And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste: 

Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, 

For precious friends hid in death's dateless night, 

And weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe, 

And moan the expense of many a vanished sight: 

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, 

And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er 

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, 

Which I new pay as if not paid before. 

    But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, 

    All losses are restor'd and sorrows end. 

 

[William Shakespeare {1564-1616} 'Sonnet XXX', from Poems that Make Grown Men Cry: 100 Men on the Words that Move Them, ed. by Anthony Holden and Ben Holden]