Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.
Amoretti and EpithalamionSonnet XXIII. Penelope, for her Ulysses sake
Edmund Spenser (1552?1599)P
Devis’d a web her wooers to deceive;
In which the work that she all day did make,
The same at night she did again unreave:
Such subtle craft my damsel doth conceive,
Th’ importune suit of my desire to shun:
For all that I in many days do weave,
In one short hour I find by her undone.
So, when I think to end that I begun,
I must begin and never bring to end:
For with one look she spills that long I spun;
And with one word my whole year’s work doth rend.
Such labour like the spider’s web I find,
Whose fruitless work is broken with least wind.