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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.] 



Edmund Spenser


Edmund Spenser's other poems:
  1. Amoretti 49. Fayre Cruell! why are ye so fierce and cruell?
  2. Amoretti 32. The paynefull smith with force of fervent heat
  3. Amoretti 46. When my abodes prefixed time is spent
  4. Amoretti 73. Being my self captyved here in care
  5. Amoretti 26. Sweet is the rose, but growes upon a brere


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