Verse > Anthologies > Elizabethan Sonnets > Amoretti and Epithalamion
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Seccombe and Arber, comps.  Elizabethan Sonnets.  1904.
 
Amoretti and Epithalamion
Sonnet IX. Long-while I sought to what I might compare
Edmund Spenser (1552?–1599)
 
LONG-WHILE I sought to what I might compare
Those powerful eyes, which lighten my dark spright;
Yet find I naught on earth, to which I dare
Resemble th’ image of their goodly light.
Not to the Sun; for they do shine by night;        5
Nor to the Moon; for they are changed never;
Nor to the Stars; for they have purer sight;
Nor to the Fire; for they consume not ever;
Nor to the Lightning; for they still perséver;
Nor to the Diamond; for they are more tender;        10
Nor unto Crystal; for nought may them sever;
Nor unto Glass; such baseness mought offend her.
  Then to the Maker self they likest be,
  Whose light doth lighten all that here we see.
 
 
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