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Home  »  Elizabethan Sonnets  »  Canzon 18. Exacter, should it fortune I should pencil thee

Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.

Zepheria

Canzon 18. Exacter, should it fortune I should pencil thee

Anonymous

EXACTER, should it fortune I should pencil thee;

What glory may attend though on my skill?

Even such as him befalls, whose pen doth copy

The sweet invention of another’s quill.

My Muse yet never journeyed to the Indes,

Thy Fair to purple in Alchermyan dye,

All on the weak spread of his eyes’ wings

Sufficeth that thou mount, though not so high!

Yet should it hap, that, in a kind vouchsafe,

The feature of my pen some grace do win;

Thereof, ZEPHERIA all the honour hath!

The copying scribe may claim no right therein:

But if more nice wits censure my lines crooked,

Thus I excuse, “I wrote, my light removed!”