Poem by Edmund Spenser

Amoretti 45. Leave, Lady! in your glasse of cristall clene

Leave, Lady! in your glasse of cristall clene
Your goodly selfe for evermore to vew,
And in my selfe, (my inward selfe I meane,)
Most lively lyke behold your semblant trew.
Within my hart, though hardly it can shew
Thing so divine to vew of earthly eye,
The fayre idea of your celestiall hew
And every part remaines immortally:
And were it not that through your cruelty
With sorrow dimmed and deform’d it were,
The goodly ymage of your visnomy*,
Clearer than cristall, would therein appere.
  But if your selfe in me ye playne will see,
  Remove the cause by which your fayre beames darkned be.

[* Visnomy, countenance.] 

1. Amoretti 46. When my abodes prefixed time is spent
2. Amoretti 13. In that proud port which her so goodly graceth
3. Amoretti 23. Penelope, for her Ulisses sake
4. Amoretti 69. The famous warriors of the anticke world
5. Amoretti 42. The love which me so cruelly tormenteth

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