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Spenser, Edmund, 1552?-1599

"The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5"


Within my hart, though hardly it can shew
Thing so divine to vew of earthly eye,
The fayre idea of your celestiall hew
And every part remaines immortally:
And were it not that through your cruelty
With sorrow dimmed and deform'd it were,
The goodly ymage of your visnomy*,
Clearer than cristall, would therein appere.
But if your selfe in me ye playne will see,
Remove the cause by which your fayre beames darkned be.
[* _Visnomy_, countenance.]

XLVI.
When my abodes prefixed time is spent,
My cruell fayre streight bids me wend my way:
But then from heaven most hideous stormes are sent,
As willing me against her will to stay.
Whom then shall I--or heaven, or her--obay?
The heavens know best what is the best for me:
But as she will, whose will my life doth sway,
My lower heaven, so it perforce must be.
But ye high hevens, that all this sorowe see,
Sith all your tempests cannot hold me backe,
Aswage your storms, or else both you and she
Will both together me too sorely wrack.
Enough it is for one man to sustaine
The stormes which she alone on me doth raine.

XLVII.
Trust not the treason of those smyling lookes,
Untill ye have their guylefull traynes well tryde;
For they are lyke but unto golden hookes,
That from the foolish fish theyr bayts do hyde:
So she with flattring smyles weake harts doth guyde
Unto her love, and tempte to theyr decay;
Whome, being caught, she kills with cruell pryde,
And feeds at pleasure on the wretched pray.


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