Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.
Amoretti and EpithalamionSonnet XXXV. My hungry eyes, through greedy covetise
Edmund Spenser (1552?–1599)M
Still to behold the object of their pain,
With no contentment can themselves suffice;
But, having, pine; and, having not, complain.
For, lacking it, they cannot life sustain;
And, having it, they gaze on it the more;
In their amazement like Narcissus vain,
Whose eyes him starv’d: so plenty makes me poor.
Yet are mine eyes so filled with the store
Of that fair sight, that nothing else they brook,
But loathe the things which they did like before,
And can no more endure on them to look.
All this world’s glory seemeth vain to me,
And all their shows but shadows, saving she.