When men shall find thy flower, thy glory, pass,

And thou, with careful brow sitting alone, Received hast this message from thy glass, That tells the truth and says that all is gone;

Fresh shalt thou see in me the wounds thou madest,

Though spent thy flame, in me the heat remaining:

I that have loved thee thus before thou fadest,

My faith shall wax when thou art in thy waning:

The world shall find this miracle in me, That fire can burn when all the matter's spent:

10

Then, what my faith hath been thyself shalt

None other fame mine unambitious Muse
Affected ever, but t' eternize thee:
All other honours do my hopes refuse,
Which meaner-prized and momentary be.
For God forbid I should my papers blot 5
With mercenary lines, with servile pen;
Praising virtues in them that have them
not,

Basely attending on the hopes of men.
No, no; my verse respects not Thames nor
theatres;

Nor seeks it to be known unto the great: 10 But Avon, rich in fame though poor in waters,

Shall have my song; where Delia hath her

seat.

Avon shall be my Thames, and she my song; No other prouder brooks shall hear my

wrong.

1592

Edmund Spenser (1552?-1599)

AMORETTI

I

HAPPY ye leaves! when as those lilly hands, Which hold my life in their dead doing might,

Shall handle you, and hold in loves soft bands,

Lyke captives trembling at the victors sight. And happy lines! on which, with starry

Ye tradefull merchants, that with weary. toyle

Do seeke most pretious things to make your gain,

And both the Indias of their treasures spoile,

What needeth you to seeke so farre in vaine?

For loe! my love doth in her selfe containe 5 All this worlds riches that may farre be found:

If saphyres, loe! her eies be saphyres plaine; If rubies, loe! her lips be rubies sound;

If pearles, her teeth be pearles both pure and round:

If yvorie, her forhead yvory weene;
If gold, her locks are finest gold on ground;
If silver, her faire hands are silver sheene:
But that which fairest is but few behold,
Her mind, adornd with vertues manifold.

10

5

Not finishing her Queene of Faëry.
That mote enlarge her living prayses, dead.
But Lodwick, this of grace to me aread:
Do ye not thinck th' accomplishment of it
Sufficient worke for one mans simple head,
All were it, as the rest, but rudely writ?
How then should I, without another wit,
Thinck ever to endure so tædious toyle, 10
Sins that this one is tost with troublous fit
Of a proud love, that doth my spirite spoyle?
Cease then, till she vouchsafe to grawnt me

rest,

Or lend you me another living brest.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, 5 And often is his gold complexion dimmed; And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, 10
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his
shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou growest;
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

XX

A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted

Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;