Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.

Amoretti and Epithalamion

Sonnet LXXXVI. Since I did leave the presence of my love

Edmund Spenser (1552?–1599)

SINCE I did leave the presence of my love,

Many long weary days I have outworn;

And many nights, that slowly seemed to move

Their sad protract from evening until morn.

For, when as day the heaven doth adorn,

I wish that night the noyous day would end:

And, when as night hath us of light forlorn,

I wish that day would shortly reascend.

Thus I the time with expectation spend,

And fain my grief with changes to beguile,

That further seems his term still to extend,

And maketh every minute seem a mile.

So sorrow still doth seem too long to last;

But joyous hours do fly away too fast.