Edmund Spenser

One day I wrote her name upon the strand, But came the waves 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 selve shall lyke to this decay, and eek my name bee wyped out lykewize." "Not so," quod I, "let baser things devize, To dy in dust, but you shall live by fame: My verse your vertues rare shall eternize, And in the heavens wryte your glorious name. Where whenas death shall all the world subdew, Our love shall live, and later life renew."

Of this worlds theatre in which we stay, My love like the spectator ydly sits Beholding me that all the pageants play, Disguysing diversly my troubled wits. Sometimes I joy when glad occasion fits, And mask in myrth lyke to a comedy: Soone after when my joy to sorrow flits, I waile and make my woes a tragedy. Yet she, beholding me with constant eye, Delights not in my merth nor rues my smart: But when I laugh she mocks, and when I cry She laughs and hardens evermore her heart. What then can move her? if nor merth nor mone, She is no woman, but a senceless stone.

My love is like to ice, and I to fire: how comes it then that this her cold so great is not dissolv'd through my so hot desire, but harder grows, the more I her entreat?

Or how comes it that my exceeding heat is not delayed by her heart frozen cold, but that I burn much more in boiling sweat, and feel my flames augmented manifold?

What more miraculous thing may be told that fire, which all thing melts, should harden ice: and ice which is congealed with senseless cold, should kindle fire by wonderful device?

Such is the pow'r of love in gentle mind that it can alter all the course of kind.

MOST glorious Lord of Lyfe! that, on this day, Didst make Thy triumph over death and sin; And, having harrowd hell, didst bring away Captivity thence captive, us to win: This joyous day, deare Lord, with joy begin; And grant that we, for whom thou diddest dye, Being with Thy deare blood clene washt from sin, May live for ever in felicity!

And that Thy love we weighing worthily, May likewise love Thee for the same againe; And for Thy sake, that all lyke deare didst buy, With love may one another entertayne! So let us love, deare Love, lyke as we ought, --Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.