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Home  »  Elizabethan Sonnets  »  Sonnet 43. Why should your fair eyes, with such sovereign grace

Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.

Idea

Sonnet 43. Why should your fair eyes, with such sovereign grace

Michael Drayton (1563–1631)

[First printed in 1605 (No. 43), and in all later editions.]

WHY should your fair eyes, with such sovereign grace,

Disperse their rays on every vulgar spirit,

Whilst I in darkness, in the self-same place,

Get not one glance to recompense my merit?

So doth the plowman gaze the wandering star,

And only rest contented with the light;

That never learned what constellations are,

Beyond the bent of his unknowing sight.

O why should Beauty (custom to obey),

To their gross sense apply herself so ill!

Would God! I were as ignorant as they!

When I am made unhappy by my skill!

Only compelled on this poor good to boast,

Heavens are not kind to them, that know them most!