Status Updates From Amoretti

These sonnets keep getting better

Sonnets 28 & 29 play with the images of laurel and bay leaves. Sonnet 30: My love is lyke to yce and I to fyre

I’m reading 10 sonnets a day. The first ten were mostly in praise of his love. The second ten were more critical of her. In sonnet XI he describes her as a cruel and determined war whom he is trying to sue for peace.

Have read a selection of the poems, including
1, 4, 10, 11, 15, 16, 18, 20, 23, 28, 30, 33, 45, 48, 54, 67, 71, 74, and 75.

ONE day I wrote her name vpon the strand,
but came the waues and washed it away:
agayne I wrote it with a second hand,
but came the tyde, and made my paynes his pray.
Vayne man, sayd she, that doest in vaine assay,
a mortall thing so to immortalize.
for I my selue shall lyke to this decay,
and eek my name bee wyped out lykewize.
Not so, (quod I) let baser things deuize,
to dy in dust, but you

THE weary yeare his race now hauing run,
The new begins his compast course anew:
with shew of morning mylde he hath begun,
betokening peace and plenty to ensew,
So let vs, which this chaunge of weather vew,
chaunge eeke our mynds and former liues amend
the old yeares sinnes forepast let vs eschew
and fly the faults with which we did offend.

But in her pride she dooth persever still,
all carelesse how my life for her decayse:
yet with one word she can it saue or spill.
to spill were pitty, but to saue were prayse.

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 wonderfull deuyse.
Such is the powre of loue in gentle mind,
that it can alter all the course of kynd.

MY loue is lyke to yse, and I to fyre;
how comes it then that this her cold so great
is not dissolu'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 feel my flames augmented manifold?

With such strange termes her eyes she doth inure,
that with one looke she doth my life dismay:
& with another doth it streight recure,
her smile me drawes, her frowne me driues away.
Thus doth she traine and teach me with her lookes,
such art of eyes I neuer read in bookes.

The sweet eye-glaunces, that like arrowes glide,
the charming smiles, that rob sence from the hart:
the louely pleasance and the lofty pride
cannot expressed be by any art.
A greater craftesmans hand thereto doth neede,
that can expresse the life of things indeed.