Text of the Day
A Brief Introduction
On a daily basis (or as often as I return to my web page), as a form of meditation and study, I like to visit a little-known and relatively inaccessible poem from the English Renaissance. The idea is to offer the poem and a brief commentary to a readership who might not otherwise have access to them. The commentary is by no means exhaustive and it can be idiosyncratic, but that I believe is the most attractive feature the Text of the Day. For the moment, I have decided to concentrate on sonnets from the 1590s. They offer ideal scope for quotidian meditation.
March 28, 1996
Commentary and Glossary Notes
The Day Before's Text
Canzon 12
Anonymous
How often have mine eyes (thine eye’s apprentice
Bound by the Earnest of a sunny look),
Ta’en a judicial view of all thy graces!
Which here are registered in lasting book.
How oft have I, thy precious chain been fingering,
That ninefold circles thy delicious neck!
While they, the orb-like spheres of heaven resembling,
Thy face the Globe! which men clep Emperick.
How oft with wanton touches have I prest
Those breasts, more soft than silver down of swans;
When they by Alcidelian springs do rest!
Of which pure substance are thy lily hands.
But now, though eyes ne see, nor arms embrace thee;
Who yet shall let, in thought, me chief to place thee?
(1594)