Amoretti: A sonnet sequence

MP3 Audio CD. Amoretti: A sonnet sequence

I

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 bath'd in the sacred brook,
Of Helicon whence she derived is,
When ye behold that Angel's blessed look,
My soul's long-lacked food, my heaven's bliss.
Leaves, lines, and rhymes, seek her to please alone,
Whom if ye please, I care for other none.

II

Unquiet thought, whom at the first I bred,
Of th' inward bale of my love-pined heart:
And sithens have with sighs and sorrows fed,
Till greater then my womb thou woxen art.
Break forth at length out of the inner part,
In which thou lurkest like to viper's brood:
And seek some succour both to ease my smart
And also to sustain thy self with food.
But if in presence of that fairest proud
Thou chance to come, fall lowly at her feet:
And with meek humbless and afflicted mood,
Pardon for thee, and grace for me entreat.
Which if she grant, then live, and my love cherish,
If not, die soon, and I with thee will perish.

III

Thou sovereign beauty which I do admire,
Witness the world how worthy to be praised:
The light whereof hath kindled heavenly fire,
In my frail spirit by her from baseness raised.
That being now with her huge brightness dazed,
Base things I can no more endure to view;
But looking still on her I stand amazed,
At wondrous sight of so celestial hew.
So when my tongue would speak her praises due,
It stopped is with thought