Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907.

To His Book

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 sprite,

Written with tears in heart’s close bleeding book:

And happy rhymes, bathed in the sacred brook

Of Helicon, whence she derivèd is,

When ye behold that angel’s blessèd look,

My soul’s long lackèd food, my heaven’s bliss:

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

Whom if ye please, I care for other none.