Sonnet XLV. Leave, lady! in your glass of crystal clean

Edmund Spenser (1552?–1599)

LEAVE, lady! in your glass of crystal clean,

Your goodly self for evermore to view:

And in my self, my inward self, I mean,

Most lively like behold your semblance true.

Within my heart, though hardly it can shew

Thing so divine to view of earthly eye,

The fair Idea of your celestial hue

And every part remains immortally:

And were it not that, through your cruelty,

With sorrow dimmed and deformed it were,

The goodly image of your visnomy,

Clearer than crystal, would therein appear.

But, if yourself in me ye plain will see,

Remove the cause by which your fair beams darkened be.