Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.

Amoretti and Epithalamion

Sonnet LXXXIV. The world that cannot deem of worthy things

Edmund Spenser (1552?–1599)

THE WORLD that cannot deem of worthy things,

When I do praise her, say I do but flatter:

So does the cuckoo, when the mavis sings,

Begin his witless note apace to clatter.

But they that skill not of so heavenly matter,

All that they know not envy or admire;

Rather than envy, let them wonder at her,

But not to deem of her desert aspire.

Deep, in the closet of my parts entire,

Her worth is written with a golden quill,

That me with heavenly fury doth inspire,

And my glad mouth with her sweet praises fill:

Which when as Fame in her shrill trump shall thunder,

Let the world choose to envy or to wonder.