Valentine's Day

 

Painting~ Howard Pyle


My favorite sonnet about love is from Amoretti, sonnet 79 by Edmund Spenser.

 

"Men call you fair, and you do credit it,

For that yourself ye daily do see.

But the true fair, that is the gentle wit

And virtuous mind, is much more prais'd of me.

For all the rest, however fair it be,

Shall turn to nought and lose that glorious hue.

But only that is permanent and free

From frail corruption, that doth flesh ensue.

That is true beauty. that doth argue you

To be divine and born of heavenly seed,

Deriv'd from that fair Spirit from whom all true

And perfect beauty did at first proceed.

He only fair, and what He fair hath made;

All other fair like flowers untimely fade. "  


And just for fun...  Sir Philip Sidney~Astrophil and Stella, sonnet 7

When Nature made her chief work, Stella's eyes,
In color black, why wrapt she beams so bright,
Would she in beamy*black, like painter wise,
Frame daintiest lustre, mixt of shades and light?
Or did she else that sober hue devise,
In object*best to knit and strengthen our sight,
Lest if no veil these brave gleams did disguise,
They sun-like should more dazzle then delight?
Or would she her miraculous power show,
That whereas black seems Beauty's contrary,
She even in black doth make all beauties flow?
Both so and thus, she minding Love should be
Placed ever there, gave him this mourning weed,
To honour all their deaths, who for her bleed. 

* beamy~ radiant, in object~in order