Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.

Amoretti and Epithalamion

Sonnet XXXVI. Tell me, when shall these weary woes have end

Edmund Spenser (1552?–1599)

TELL me, when shall these weary woes have end,

Or shall their ruthless torment never cease;

But all my days in pining languor spend,

Without hope of assuagement or release?

Is there no means for me to purchase peace,

Or make agreement with her thrilling eyes;

But that their cruelty doth still increase,

And daily more augment my miseries?

But, when ye have shown all extremities,

Then think how little glory ye have gained

By slaying him, whose life, though ye despise,

Might have your life in honour long maintained.

But by his death, which some perhaps will moan,

Ye shall condemned be of many a one.