| Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904. | | | | Amoretti and Epithalamion | | Sonnet XXX. My love is like to ice, and I to fire | | Edmund Spenser (1552?–1599) |
| | | MY love is like to ice, and I to fire; | |
| How comes it then that this her cold so great | |
| Is not dissolv’d through my so hot desire, | |
| But harder grows the more I her entreat? | |
| Or how comes it that my exceeding heat | 5 |
| Is not delay’d by her heart-frozen cold; | |
| But that I burn much more in boiling sweat, | |
| And feel my flames augmented manifold! | |
| What more miraculous thing may be told, | |
| That fire, which all things melts, should harden ice; | 10 |
| And ice, which is congeal’d with senseless cold, | |
| Should kindle fire by wonderful device! | |
| Such is the power of love in gentle mind, | |
| That it can alter all the course of kind. | | | | |
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