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Home  »  Elizabethan Sonnets  »  Sonnet XVI. One day as I unwarily did gaze

Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.

Amoretti and Epithalamion

Sonnet XVI. One day as I unwarily did gaze

Edmund Spenser (1552?–1599)

ONE day as I unwarily did gaze

On those fair eyes, my love’s immortal light;

The whiles my ’stonish’d heart stood in amaze,

Through sweet illusion of her look’s delight;

I mote perceive how, in her glancing sight,

Legions of loves with little wings did fly;

Darting their deadly arrows, fiery bright,

At every rash beholder passing by.

One of those archers closely I did spy,

Aiming his arrow at my very heart:

When suddenly, with twinkle of her eye,

The Damsel broke his misintended dart.

Had she not so done, sure I had been slain;

Yet as it was, I hardly scap’d with pain.