1     The sovereign beauty which I do admire,
2     Witness the world how worthy to be praised:
3     The light whereof hath kindled heavenly fire
4     In my frail spirit, by her from baseness raised;
5     That being now with her huge brightness dazed,
6     Base thing I can no more endure to view;
7     But looking still on her, I stand amazed
8     At wondrous sight of so celestial hue.
9     So when my tongue would speak her praises due,
10    It stopped is with thought's astonishment:
11    And when my pen would write her titles true,
12    It ravish'd is with fancy's wonderment:
13    Yet in my heart I then both speak and write
14    The wonder that my wit cannot endite.

1     Men call you fair, and you do credit it,
2     For that your self ye daily such do see:
3     But the true fair, that is the gentle wit,
4     And vertuous mind, is much more prais'd of me.
5     For all the rest, how ever fair it be,
6     Shall turn to naught and lose that glorious hue:
7     But only that is permanent and free
8     From frail corruption, that doth flesh ensue.
9     That is true beauty: that doth argue you
10    To be divine, and born of heavenly seed:
11    Deriv'd from that fair Spirit, from whom all true
12    And perfect beauty did at first proceed.
13    He only fair, and what he fair hath made,
14    All other fair, like flowers untimely fade.
Notes for Sonnet 3

1.   Sovereign: highest, supreme.

3.   Heavenly: Spenser uses religious terminology to describe his beloved; the Amoretti contains many of such references and more direct comparisons between Spenser's love and Christ.

4.   Her from baseness raised: perhaps an allusion to Christ.

8.   Celestial: more vaguely religious terminology used to describe his beloved.

14.   Endite: write, record.


Notes for Sonnet 79

6.   As in sonnet 75, Spenser expresses the idea of the impermanence of everything but love, or more specifically in this sonnet, aspirations of love through the perception of beauty.

8.   Ensue: pursue

10.   Divine: again Spenser uses religious terminology to describe his beloved; the Amoretti contains many of such references and more direct comparisons between Spenser's love and Christ.

11.   Spenser asserts that God is the source of true beauty, which he attributes to inner beauty ("gentle wit" and "vertuous mind").

13-14.   In these last two lines, Spenser states that what God creates "fair" and grants inner beauty is eternal, while physical beauty ultimately will fade.


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