Michael Drayton, (1563–1631), poet (and later, playwright), was born early in 1563 at Hartshill, near Atherstone, in north Warwickshire. His origins were humble and almost nothing is known about his early life, beyond the fact that in 1580 he was in the service of Thomas Goodere of Collingham, Nottinghamshire.
Drayton began composing his sonnet sequence, Idea’s Mirror, in 1594 and revised it frequently before publishing the final version in 1619 under the title Idea. Not the only work in which Drayton invokes “Idea” in the title, the “Mirror” alludes to an important figure in his life, Anne Goodyear, the daughter of his early patron, Sir Henry Goodyear. She and Drayton were childhood friends and when Anne later married Henry Rainsford, Drayton and he also became intimates. While her role as Idea allows Drayton to portray Anne in the conventional poetic dress of unattainable beloved, the sonnet cycle is above all a tribute to the intimate understanding of a friendship. (Carol Rumens, "Poem of the week: Sonnets from Idea's Mirror by Michael Drayton", The Guardian, 14 October 2019).
In the 1619 folio edition of his early poems, Poems by Michael Drayton Esquyer (dedicated to Sir Walter Aston), Drayton published the final version of Idea, the sonnet sequence which he had begun in 1594 and repeatedly revised over the years.
For ease of reading, information has been taken from: DNB entry by Anne Lake Prescott, Wikipedia, The Guardian, and The Poetry Foundation website.
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LXI.
SINCE here's no help, come, let us kiss and part,
Nay, I have done, you get no more of me,
And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly I myself can free.
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,
When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes.
Now, if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou might'st him yet recover.
