]
[** _Heast_, command.]
SONNETS
WRITTEN BY SPENSER,
COLLECTED FKOM THE ORIGINAL PUBLICATIONS IN
WHICH THEY APPEARED.
I*.
_To the right worshipfull, my singular good frend,
M. Gabriell Harvey, Doctor of the Lawes._
Harvey, the happy above happiest men
I read**; that, sitting like a looker-on
Of this worldes stage, doest note with critique pen
The sharpe dislikes of each condition:
And, as one carelesse of suspition,
Ne fawnest for the favour of the great,
Ne fearest foolish reprehension
Of faulty men, which daunger to thee threat:
But freely doest of what thee list entreat,@
Like a great lord of peerelesse liberty,
Lifting the good up to high Honours seat,
And the evill damning evermore to dy:
For life and death is in thy doomeful writing;
So thy renowme lives ever by endighting.
Dublin, this xviij. of July, 1586.
Your devoted friend, during life,
EDMUND SPENCER.
[* From "Foure Letters and certaine Sonnets especially touching Robert
Greene, and other parties by him abused," &c. London, 1592. TODD.]
[** _Read_, consider.]
[@ _Entreat_, treat.]
II*.
Whoso wil seeke, by right deserts, t'attaine
Unto the type of true nobility,
And not by painted shewes, and titles vaine,
Derived farre from famous auncestrie,
Behold them both in their right visnomy**
Here truly pourtray'd as they ought to be,
And striving both for termes of dignitie,
To be advanced highest in degree.
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