Amoretti: Sonnet 40
by
XL.
Mark when she smiles with amiable cheare,
And tell me whereto can ye lyken it;
When on each eyelid sweetly doe appeare
An hundred Graces as in shade to sit.
Lykest it seemeth, in my simple wit,
Unto the fayre sunshine in somers day,
That, when a dreadfull storme away is flit,
Thrugh the broad world doth spred his goodly ray
At sight whereof, each bird that sits on spray.
And every beast that to his den was fled,
Comes forth afresh out of their late dismay,
And to the light lift up their drouping hed.
So my storme-beaten hart likewise is cheared
With that sunshine, when cloudy looks are cleared.
[Footnote: XL. 4.–An hundred Graces. E.K., in his commentary on the Shepheards Calender, quotes a line closely resembling this from Spenser’s Pageants:
“An hundred Graces on her eyelids sat.”
The same fancy occurs in the Faerie Queene, and in the Hymn to Beauty. It is copied from a poem ascribed to Musaeus. C.]