dots-menu
×

Home  »  Elizabethan Sonnets  »  Sonnet XV. Ye tradeful Merchants, that, with weary toil

Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.

Amoretti and Epithalamion

Sonnet XV. Ye tradeful Merchants, that, with weary toil

Edmund Spenser (1552?–1599)

YE tradeful Merchants, that, with weary toil,

Do seek most precious things to make your gain;

And both the Indias of their treasure spoil;

What needeth you to seek so far in vain?

For lo, my love doth in her self contain

All this world’s riches that may far be found:

If sapphires, lo, her eyes be sapphires plain;

If rubies, lo, her lips be rubies sound;

If pearls, her teeth be pearls, both pure and round;

If ivory, her forehead ivory ween;

If gold, her locks are finest gold on ground;

If silver, her fair hands are silver sheen:

But that which fairest is, but few behold,

Her mind adorned with virtues manifold.