The Shorter Poems

  Sonnet XXV

  Cf. Petrarch, Rime Sparse, 134; HL, 162–8.

  2 her owne: life’s own.

  3 termes: conditions or periods of time.

  4 depending doubtfully: hanging uncertainly.

  14 turne: return.

  Sonnet XXVI

  A floral sonnet placed fourth after Ash Wednesday (22) while its counterpart, sonnet 64, is placed fourth before Easter (68). It deals with the ‘lower’ senses of taste, touch and smell (cf. Castiglione, Courtier, 334).

  1 brere: briar, cf. SC, Februarie, 115.

  2 Iunipere: juniper, an evergreen shrub.

  3 Eglantine: wild rose, cf. SC, Maye, 13.

  nere: deeply, near to the bone.

  4 firbloome: fur-bloom or furze.

  5 Cypresse: cf. SC, November, [145].

  rynd: bark.

  6 pill: shell.

  7 broome-flowre: a shrub whose twigs are used for sweeping.

  8 Moly: magic herb with white flower and black root given to Odysseus to counter the spells of Circe. Cf. Homer, Odyssey, 10. 320–26; Ovid, Metamorphoses, 14. 291–2.

  13 accoumpt of: consider significant, make much of.

  Sonnet XXVII

  A classical topos, cf. Horace, Odes, 4. 10.

  3 shroud: anticipating the clothing imagery at lines 5–6.

  4 how… weene: however little consideration you give the matter now.

  5 Idoll: implying the ‘idolatry’ of Narcissism. Cf. Amor, 35. 7 and note.

  gay beseene: ostentatiously apparelled

  6 doffe: put off.

  fleshes… attyre: for flesh as clothing, cf. Job 10: 11.

  10–14 ne… paine: cf. RT, 253–9, 400–406.

  12 thankles: because she displays ingratitude.

  13 that: that which.

  Sonnet XXVIII

  1 laurell: emblem of poetry and conquest, recalling Petrarch’s Laura. Cf. Rime Sparse, 5; Ronsard, Astrée, 11; SC, Aprill, [104] and note.

  7 infusion: pouring in.

  9–12 Adapting the standard account whereby Daphne was transformed to save her from being ravished. Cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses, 1. 452–567.

  10 Thessalian: of Thessaly, in north-eastern Greece.

  14 leafe: both laurel leaves and the leaves of his poetry.

  Sonnet XXIX

  1 depraue: pervert in the sense of misinterpret or misconstrue.

  2 simple: innocent.

  3 bay: bay or laurel leaves; as in the preceding sonnet.

  4 accoumpts: accounts, considers.

  9 sith… needs: since she feels compelled to contest my victory.

  12 trump of fame: the trumpet was a traditional emblem of fame

  blaze: blow (and by blowing proclaim).

  Sonnet XXX

  For the topos of ice and fire cf. Petrarch, Rime Sparse, 134, 202.

  6 delayd: quenched (as at FQ, 3. 12. 42).

  7 boyling: perhaps playing upon the surname of Spenser’s second wife Elizabeth Boyle. She was a cousin of Sir Richard Boyle, first Earl of Cork, and distantly related to the Spencers of Althorp.

  10 that: than that.

  11 sencelesse: lifeless, numb.

  12 wonderfull deuyse: astonishing contrivance or sleight.

  Sonnet XXXI

  Cf. Petrarch, Rime Sparse, 265; Desportes, Cléonice, 74.

  3 depraues: perverts, spoils.

  5 beastes… race: creatures of prey.

  9 scath: harm, injury.

  Sonnet XXXII

  1–4 For the blacksmith imagery cf. FQ, 5. 5. 7–8.

  1 paynefull: painstaking.

  feruent: glowing, searing.

  2 mollify: soften, make malleable.

  3 sledge: sledge hammer.

  4 to… apply: to whatever shape or purpose he chooses.

  5 fry: burn.

  6 soft awhit: soften at all.

  11 Proverbial: ‘the more you beat iron the harder it grows’.

  12 applyde: directed, addressed.

  14 stones: possibly hailstones, but cf. Amor, 54. 14 and note.

  Sonnet XXXIII

  The new Elizabeth in the poet’s life has displaced his queen, as at FQ, 6. 10. 25–8. Cf. Amor, 80.

  2 Empresse: Elizabeth I, as Queen of England, Ireland, France and Virginia, and so described on the title-page of FQ (1590, 1596).

  dear dred: as both beloved and awe-inspiring. Cf. FQ, 1 Proem 4.

  4 enlarge… dead: magnify her posthumous fame.

  5 lodwick: Lodowick Bryskett. Cf. CCH, 156 and note.

  of… aread: be gracious or kind enough to explain to me.

  8 all: even.

  11 sins: since.

  Sonnet XXXIIII

  For the ship imagery cf. Petrarch, Rime Sparse, 189, 235; TM, 139–44.

  2 conduct: guidance.

  8 hidden perils: allegorically the perils of sensual desire.

  10 Helice: the constellation of the Great Bear by which Greek mariners navigated. Cf. Ovid, Fasti, 3. 107–8. The name also recalls Helicon, the source of poetic inspiration.

  lodestar: the pole-star was actually in the Lesser Bear or Cynosure.

  Sonnet XXXV

  Repeated with minor alterations as sonnet 83 but in a new context. Here, incipient notions of Platonic ascent from body to soul (9–14) are submerged in ‘the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes’ (1 John 2: 15–16). Thus ‘hungry eyes’ replace Petrarch’s ‘weary eyes’ (Rime Sparse, 14. 1).

  1 couetize: avarice, cf. note to line 8.

  3 suffize: satisfy.

  7 Narcissus: cf. SC, June, 52 and note. Ficino interprets the myth as signifying how the soul is ‘seduced by bodily beauty’, which is a mere shadow of the divine, and therefore cannot attain true satisfaction (Commentary, 6. 17).

  8 staru’d: because he could not ‘feed’ on what he saw.

  plenty… poore: translating Ovid’s phrase ‘inopem me copia fecit’ and used as the emblem to SC, September (cf. Metamorphoses, 3. 466). The phrase is applied to avarice at FQ, 1. 4. 29.

  10 brooke: endure, find agreeable.

  13–14 Ironically overlooking the lady’s own mortality. Cf. ‘the world passeth away and the lust thereof’ (1 John 2: 17).

  Sonnet XXXVI

  6 thrilling: piercing, exciting.

  9 extremityes: utmost acts of rigour or severity.

  Sonnet XXXVII

  1 golden tresses: resembling Petrarch’s Laura, Rime Sparse, 90. 1.

  2 attyre: dress, do up.

  6 golden snare: loose hair usually symbolizes wantonness, bound hair chastity. The very emblem of the lady’s virtue excites the speaker’s desire. Cf. Amor, 81. 1–2; Epith, 62.

  8 harts: blond locks bind hearts at Petrarch, Rime Sparse, 253. 3–4.

  Sonnet XXXVIII

  1–4 Arion… ease: Arion was thrown overboard by thieves but saved by a dolphin through the influence of the poet’s god, Apollo (cf. Ovid, Fasti, 2. 79–118). For the imagery of passion as a tempest cf. Amor, 40, 41. In the wedding masque at FQ, 4. 11. 23 Arion precedes the bridegroom.

  1 wracke: violence, ruin.

  4 ease: save, relieve.

  9 perseuer: persevere.

  Sonnet XXXIX

  1 Queene of loue: Venus. Cf. Proth, 96–100.

  3 Ioue: Zeus or Jupiter, father of the gods.

  5 art: with a play on Venus’ ‘powrefull art’.

  8 reuiued… robbing: a deliberate paradox to signify the enigmatic operations of love.

  9–10 heauenly… traunce: this ecstatic experience confounds the mystical in the sensual, subverting the spiritual vision of Platonic love.

  12–14 fed… eat: the lover was commonly held to derive nourishment from the sight and sound of his lady. Cf. Castiglione, Courtier, 334–5; HB, 248–50.

  13 Nectar… meat: cf. SC, November, [195].

  Sonnet XL

  Cf. Petrarch, Rime Sparse, 192.

  4 Graces: cf. SC, Aprill, [109]; June, [25] and notes. The Graces are fittingly recalled in view of the etymology
of their names: Aglaia (‘bright’), Euphrosyne (‘cheerful’), Thalia (‘festive’). Cf. Hesiod, Theogony, 907–11.

  7 flit: passed, gone.

  9 spray: twig, small branch.

  Sonnet XLI

  1 nature: natural condition or temperament.

  will: personal volition, cf. the ‘freewill’ of Amor, 10. 4 and note.

  3–8 Employing the trope of divisio or dialysis, a mode of arguing towards a conclusion through disjunctive propositions.

  9 beauties… boast: beauty’s empty ostentation or show.

  Sonnet XLII

  6 acquit: released, delivered.

  8 pledge: pawn.

  9 which: referring to his heart.

  start: deviate or swerve away.

  10 adamant: unbreakable. Cf. HL, 89.

  11 peruart: lead astray, corrupt.

  12 safe assurance: fidelity. Cf. Amor, 58 and 59.

  14 doe: make, cause.

  Sonnet XLIII

  For this topos cf. Tasso, Rime, 2. 246 (no. 164); 2. 248 (no. 166).

  8 stupid stock: senseless block (of wood).

  9–14 Silence, a virtue most commonly associated with ‘womanhood’ (FQ, 4. 10. 51), is here assigned to the male and endowed with semi-mystical significance. The lady’s ‘wit’ will enable her to decipher the language of silence and the emotional alphabet of glances. The emblem of silence was a musical notation composed solely of rests or pauses. Cf. Epith, 353 and note.

  13 spel: decipher, comprehend.

  14 construe: translate or interpret (the language of love).

  Sonnet XLIIII

  Orpheus acted as the coxswain for the Argonauts on their voyage to attain the golden fleece and quelled their disputes with song. Cf. Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, 1. 492–515; Comes, Mythologiae, 7. 14; FQ, 4. 1.

  23. For Orpheus cf. SC, October, [28]; VG, 433–80 and notes.

  7 warreid: ravaged.

  Sonnet XLV

  1–4 Plato asserts that the loved one is ‘as it were a mirror in which the lover beholds himself’ (Phaedrus, 255d). The sonnet employs Platonic notions to witty effect throughout. Cf. Amor, 7 and note.

  1 glasse: looking-glass, mirror.

  clene: clear.

  2 euermore: for all future time (but the possible sense of ‘continually’ would imply that the lady was vain).

  4 liuely lyke: lifelike.

  6 vew: sight, perusal.

  7 Idea: in Platonic philosophy ideas are the abstract ‘forms’ of things perceptible to the intellect (not the sight) and hence more ‘real’ than material objects. The lady will apprehend her true image in the ‘mirror’ of the speaker’s heart. Cf. Michael Drayton, Ideas Mirrour (1594).

  10 dimmed… deformd: the ‘mirror’ is distorted by the speaker’s grief at unrequited love, but Plato would identify the cause as sensual passion.

  11 ymage: mental picture.

  14 remoue… be: an alexandrine, as at Amor, 10. 14.

  Sonnet XLVI

  1 abodes: stay’s or visit’s.

  8 lower heauen: alluding to the common cosmological distinction between the material and celestial (or perhaps the crystalline) heavens. The former should function as a reflection of the latter.

  12 sorely wrack: severely injure or punish.

  Sonnet XLVII

  Cf. Tasso, Rime, 2. 128 (no. 88).

  3–4 golden… hyde: i.e. the enticing glitter of the gold disguises the danger of the hook.

  6 decay: decline, ruin.

  10 louely: lovingly, affectionately.

  12 of… beguyle: elude the sensation of pain (by self-delusion).

  Sonnet XLVIII

  There is a loose resemblance to Desportes, Diane, 2. 75.

  2 matter: as both the cause and victim (or object) of her wrath.

  5 hyre: recompense, reward.

  6 hereticks: the burning of alleged heretics was a feature of the reign of Queen Mary, widely regarded by Protestants as a tyrant.

  8 plead: pleaded.

  payned: caused to suffer pain.

  9 constrayned: compelled.

  12 passion: suffering.

  14 speake… good: speak well of her.

  Sonnet XLIX

  Cf. Tasso, Rime, 2. 107 (no. 74).

  3 mighties iewell: adornment of the powerful.

  10 Cockatrices: hybrid monsters with the head, wings and feet of a cock and the tail of a serpent, able to kill with a glance and often identified with the basilisk.

  12 regard: look (but also consideration).

  Sonnet L

  Cf. Desportes, Les Amours d’Hippolyte, 53.

  1 languishing: suffering, pining.

  3 leach: physician.

  7 hart… chiefe: Thomas Vicary asserts that the heart is ‘King of al members’ but that the brain is ‘the gouernour or the treasurie of the fyue wittes’ (The Anatomie of the Bodie of Man, chapters 4, 7).

  9 cordialls: medicines designed to invigorate the heart (playing on the Latin cor, ‘heart’).

  13 lyfes Leach: the lady (a role assigned to Christ in religious poetry).

  Sonnet LI

  1 ymages: likenesses.

  2 of purpose: deliberately.

  4 ne: nor.

  6 hardnes: hardness of heart is identified by Christ as an impediment to salvation (Mark 16: 14), but is here intrinsic to the lady’s chastity. Cf. Amor, 54. 12–14 and notes.

  7–8 sith… end: since no excellent feat was ever attempted which was accomplished, and concluded, without great difficulty.

  9–14 Cf. Amor, 25, 26.

  9 attend: attend to it (or possibly wait for it, or bide his time).

  10 allure: entice, draw.

  11 bend: incline, dispose (towards myself).

  13 paines: painful endeavours.

  Sonnet LII

  Cf. Petrarch, Rime Sparse, 242.

  4 knowen: familiar, marked with his family arms or device.

  11 dumps: fits of melancholy or dejection.

  13 absens: ‘the lover who is intent only on physical beauty loses all his good and happiness as soon as the woman he loves, by her absence, leaves his eyes deprived of their splendour’ (Castiglione, Courtier, 337).

  Sonnet LIII

  1–4 This habit is ascribed to both panthers and tigers in Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De Proprietatibus Rerum, 18. 82.

  6 semblant… hew: appearance of her form or figure.

  9 view: appearance.

  10 most ornament: greatest adornment.

  11 make: turn or transform into.

  12 good… instrument: it is shameful for good to become the instrument of evil.

  Sonnet LIIII

  Cf. Tasso, Rime, 3. 265 (no. 213).

  1 worlds Theatre: a familiar topos. Ortelius’ famous atlas was entitled Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (1570), effectively the ‘theatre’ of the world.

  3 pageants: scenes or performances (with connotations of self-dramatization and deception).

  7 flits: alters, changes.

  9 constant: steady, fixed (in the sense of emotionally unmoved).

  12 hardens… hart: cf. Amor, 51. 6 and note.

  14 woman… stone: Anaxarete was turned to stone for spurning her lover Iphis. Ovid tells the story as a warning to ladies against hardness of heart (cf. Metamorphoses, 14. 693–764).

  Sonnet LV

  2 compare: for the rhetorical device of comparatio cf. Amor, 9.

  3 mould: clay, earth. According to Coverdale’s Bible, God made Adam ‘of the moulde of the earth’ (Tobit 8: 6).

  5–8 earth… fyre: the four mutable elements of which the sublunary world is composed. Cf. FQ, 7. 7. 17–25.

  6 loue… fyre: a familiar Petrarchan topos.

  7 light: playing on the sense of fickle, changeable.

  9 another Element: everything above the sphere of the moon was held to be composed of the fifth element, the quintessence or ether. It was believed to be latent in all things and alchemists laboured to distil it.

  11 haughty: lofty, exalted (but with conno
tations of pride).

  14 mercy: an attribute of God.

  Sonnet LVI

  Cf. Tasso, Rime, 4. 69 (no. 523).

  2 Tygre: an emblem of cruelty. Cf. FQ, 1. 6. 26; 5. 8. 49.

  8 ruinate: destroy.

  9 obstinate: playing upon the Latin obstare, ‘to stand in the way’.

  11 succour desolate: destitute of help.

  Sonnet LVII

  Cf. Petrarch, Rime Sparse, 21; Du Bellay, L’Olive, 70.

  3 sue: pursue, but playing upon the sense of ‘woo’ or ‘court’.

  4 incessant battry: cf. Amor, 14. 10. The speaker’s plans have recoiled upon himself.

  7–9 seeing… still: cf. HL, 122–6; HB, 239–45 and notes.

  13 graunt… grace: grant me grace in good time.

  Sonnet LVIII

  If we take ‘by her’ in its usual sense, this sonnet is attributed to the lady who complains of worldly security (‘assurance’) after the fashion of VW (153), and concludes with an address to women. Deuteronomy warns that ‘thou… shalt have none assurance of thy life’ (28:66). Cf. also 2 Corinthians 1: 9. However, the intermingling of possessive pronouns (‘her… her… his… your’) affords ironic applications to both parties. The lady may be too assured of her power to reject a lover, the speaker may be too assured of the power of the flesh in promoting his suit. If we interpret ‘by her’ as ‘concerning her’, then the speaker, mindful of the ‘safe assurance’ pledged in sonnet 42, warns the ‘proud fayre’ against false security. Assurance also connoted betrothal, a mutual agreement transcending the isolated self. It has been pointed out that the two contrasting sonnets on assurance, 58 and 59, face or ‘mirror’ one another in the first edition. Cf. Fukuda (1988).

  2 her: its (the flesh is gendered female, cf. note to CCH, 918).