Samuel Daniel (1562-1619). Beauty, Sweet Love, Is Like the Morning Dew. William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. 1907. The Book of Elizabethan Verse

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William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907.

Beauty, Sweet Love, Is Like the Morning Dew

By Samuel Daniel (1562–1619)


From “Delia” BEAUTY, 1 sweet Love, is like the morning dew,
Whose short refresh 2 upon the tender green
Cheers for a time, but till the sun doth shew,
And straight ’tis gone as it had never been.
Soon doth it fade that makes the fairest flourish, 3	5
Short is the glory of the blushing rose;
The hue which thou so carefully dost nourish,
Yet which at length thou must be forced to lose.
When thou, surcharged with burthen of thy years,
Shalt bend thy wrinkles homeward to the earth,	10
And that, in Beauty’s Lease 4 expired, appears
The Date of Age, the Kalends of our Death—
But ah! no more!—this must not be foretold,
For women grieve to think they must be old.

Note 1. Beauty, sweet Love, is like the morning dew. In Dr. Grosart’s ed. of Daniel’s Works, this sonnet is numbered l., though in earlier editions it is assigned xlvii. in Delia, 1592. The date of publication of these sonnets one year after those of Sidney’s, classes their author with the latter poet as a pioneer in the experiment of a literary fashion which shares with the drama the glories of the Age that left them unexcelled. [back]

Note 2. Refresh: refreshing. [back]

Note 3. Flourish: flourishing, i.e., to blossom. [back]

Note 4. And that, in Beauty’s Lease: In the ed. of 1594 appears a later version of these concluding lines:

	When time has made a passport of thy fears,
	Dated in Age, the Kalends of our death,
	But ah! no more! This hath been often told,
	And women grieve to think they must grow old.

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