Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Hunt and Lee, comps. The Book of the Sonnet. 1867.

I. To His Sonnets, on Sending Them to His Mistress

Edmund Spenser (1552?–1599)

HAPPY, ye leaves! when as those lily hands

Which hold my life in their dead-doing might

Shall handle you, and hold in love’s soft bands,

Like captives trembling at the victor’s sight;

And happy lines! on which, with starry light,

Those lamping eyes will deign sometimes to look,

And read the sorrows of my dying spright

Written with tears in heart’s close-bleeding book;

And happy rhymes! bathed in the sacred brook

Of Helicon, whence she derivéd is;—

When ye behold that angel’s blessed look,

My soul’s long-lackéd food, my heaven’s bliss,

Leaves, lines, and rhymes, seek her to please alone,

Whom if ye please, I care for other none.