Sonnet LXVI. To all those happy blessings, which ye have

Edmund Spenser (1552?–1599)

TO all those happy blessings, which ye have

With plenteous hand by heaven upon you thrown;

This one disparagement they to you gave,

That ye your love lent to so mean a one.

Ye, whose high worth’s surpassing paragon

Could not on earth have found one fit for mate,

Ne but in heaven matchable to none,

Why did ye stoop unto so lowly state?

But ye thereby much greater glory gat,

Than had ye sorted with a prince’s peer:

For, now your light doth more itself dilate,

And, in my darkness, greater doth appear.

Yet, since your light hath once illumined me,

With my reflex yours shall increased be.