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Home  »  Elizabethan Sonnets  »  Sonnet VI. Mirror of Beauty! Nature’s fairest Child!

Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.

Diella

Sonnet VI. Mirror of Beauty! Nature’s fairest Child!

Richard Linche (fl. 1596–1601)

MIRROR of Beauty! Nature’s fairest Child!

Empress of Love! my heart’s high-prizèd jewel!

Learn of the Dove, to love and to be mild!

be not to him that honours thee, so cruel!

But as the Asp, deaf, angry, nothing meek;

thou will not listen to my doleful plaint!

Nor once wilt look on my discoloured cheek!

which wanting blood, causeth me oft to faint.

Then, silent will I be! if that will please thee:

yet so, as in my stead, each plain, each hill

Shall echo forth my grief! and thereby ease me;

for I myself, of speaking have my fill.

If plains and hills be silent in my pain;

My death shall speak! and tell what I sustain!