Amoretti: Sonnet 1
Amoretti: Sonnet 1 Lyrics
which hold my life in their dead doing might
shall handle you and hold in loves soft bands,
lyke captives trembling at the victors sight.
And happy lines, on which with starry light,
those lamping eyes will deigne sometimes to look
and reade the sorrowes of my dying spright,
written with teares in harts close bleeding book.
And happy rymes bath'd in the sacred brooke
of Helicon whence she derived is,
when ye behold that Angels blessed looke,
my soules long lacked foode, my heavens blis.
Leaves, lines, and rymes, seeke her to please alone,
whom if ye please, I care for other none.
About
In this first poem of the sequence the poet addresses his poems themselves: the three quatrains speak with increasing focus of “leaves,” then “lines,” then “rhymes,” as if we are opening the page, seeing the lines, and hearing the rhymes.
The sequence begins in typical dramatic fashion, begging the lady to read and entrusting the poet’s own life to her hands and her gaze, her being pleased by his poems. He speaks in heavenly terms of stars and angel, of soul and heaven, but is very focused on his own earthly emotional state.
Spenserian sonnets rhyme much more heavily than Shakespearean sonnets (see the PoemShape blog). In Shakespeare’s usual sonnet each quatrain has its own pair of rhymes, but in Spenser’s the quatrains are linked together by a rhyme shared with its neighbor, while the couplet is still broken off into its own sound. Namely:
A hands
B might
A bands
B sight
B light
C look
B spright
C book
C brooke
D is
C looke
D blis
E alone
E none.
Those who see the entire sequence as connected to the calendar of Spring 1594 (leading up to Easter in Sonnet 68 on March 31), this opening sonnet refers to Wednesday, January 23.
Q&A
Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning
- 1.Amoretti: Sonnet 1
- 90.Anacreontics
- 91.Epithalamion
