Sonnet XIII. In that proud port, which her so goodly graceth

Edmund Spenser (1552?–1599)

IN that proud port, which her so goodly graceth,

Whiles her fair face she rears up to the sky,

And to the ground her eye-lids low embaseth,

Most goodly temperature ye may descry;

Mild humbless, mixed with awful majesty.

For, looking on the earth whence she was born,

Her mind remember’th her mortality,

Whatso is fairest shall to earth return.

But that same lofty countenance seems to scorn

Base thing, and think how she to heaven may climb;

Treading down earth as loathsome and forlorn,

That hinders heavenly thoughts with drossy slime.

Yet lowly still vouchsafe to look on me;

Such lowliness shall make you lofty be.