Poem by Edmund Spenser

Amoretti 30. My Love is lyke to yse, and I to fyre

My Love is lyke to yse, and I to fyre:
How comes it then that this her cold so great
Is not dissolv’d through my so hot desyre,
But harder growes the more I her intreat?
Or how comes it that my exceeding heat
Is not delayd* by her hart-frosen cold,
But that I burne much more in boyling sweat,
And feele my flames augmented manifold?
What more miraculous thing may be told,
That fire, which all things melts, should harden yse,
And yse, which is congeald with sencelesse cold,
Should kindle fyre by wonderful devyse?
  Such is the powre of love in gentle mind,
  That it can alter all the course of kynd.

[* Delayd, tempered.] 

1. Amoretti 67. Lyke as a huntsman, after weary chace
2. Amoretti 80. After so long a race as I have run
3. Amoretti 21. Was it the worke of Nature or of Art
4. Amoretti 87. Since I have lackt the comfort of that light
5. Amoretti 88. Lyke as the culver on the bared bough

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