A few sonnets I like from the 16th and 17th centuries

I’ve never been much of a poetry person. I thought Shakespeare would be my gateway into poetry, but no. Or rather, I do like dramatic and epic poetry—it’s lyric poetry that I struggle with, except for Shakespeare’s sonnets and some poems here and there by Donne, Milton, Keats, Tennyson, etc. I like stories, that’s the thing, and I like characters (my love for Shakespeare’s sonnets is possibly because I read them as part of a sequence, and there are characters). 

Anyway, that’s why I picked up The Oxford Book of Sonnets, to try to get into poetry. Here are some sonnets I like from the 16th and 17th centuries that were not by Shakespeare (in the same order as in the book).  

Edmund Spenser 

Amoretti LXXV

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,

But came the waves and washed it away:

Again I wrote it with a second hand,

But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.

“Vain man,” said she, “that dost in vain assay,

A mortal thing so to immortalise;

For I myself shall like to this decay,

And eke my name be wiped out likewise.”

“Not so,” (quoth I) “let baser things devise

To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:

My verse your virtues rare shall eternise,

And in the heavens write your glorious name:

Where, whenas death shall all the world subdue,

Our love shall live, and later life renew.”

Amoretti LXXVII

Was it a dream, or did I see it plain,

A goodly table of pure ivory:

All spread with junkets, fit to entertain

The greatest prince with pompous royalty.

’Mongst which there in a silver dish did lie

Two golden apples of unvalued price:

Far passing those which Hercules came by,

Or those which Atalanta did entice.

Exceeding sweet, yet void of sinful vice,

That many sought yet none could ever taste,

Sweet fruit of pleasure brought from paradise

By love himself, and in his garden placed.

Her breast that table was so richly spread,

My thoughts the guests, which would thereon have fed.

Sir Philip Sidney 

Astrophil and Stella 39 

Come Sleep! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace,

The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,

The poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release,

Th’ indifferent judge between the high and low.

With shield of proof shield me from out the press

Of those fierce darts despair at me doth throw:

O make in me those civil wars to cease;

I will good tribute pay, if thou do so.

Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,

A chamber deaf to noise and blind to light,

A rosy garland and a weary head:

And if these things, as being thine by right,

Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me,

Livelier than elsewhere, Stella’s image see.

Samuel Daniel 

Delia 45 

Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night,

Brother to Death, in silent darkness born:

Relieve my languish, and restore the light,

With dark forgetting of my cares, return;

And let the day be time enough to mourn

The shipwreck of my ill-adventured youth:

Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn,

Without the torment of the night’s untruth.

Cease dreams, th’ imagery of our day-desires,

To model forth the passions of the morrow;

Never let rising sun approve you liars,

To add more grief to aggravate my sorrow.

Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain;

And never wake to feel the day’s disdain.

John Donne 

I am a little world made cunningly

Of elements and an angelic sprite,

But black sin hath betray’d to endless night

My world’s both parts, and oh both parts must die.

You which beyond that heaven which was most high

Have found new spheres, and of new lands can write,

Pour new seas in mine eyes, that so I might

Drown my world with my weeping earnestly,

Or wash it, if it must be drown’d no more.

But oh it must be burnt; alas the fire

Of lust and envy have burnt it heretofore,

And made it fouler; let their flames retire,

And burn me O Lord, with a fiery zeal

Of thee and thy house, which doth in eating heal.

At the round earth’s imagin’d corners, blow

Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise

From death, you numberless infinities

Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go;

All whom the flood did, and fire shall o’erthrow,

All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,

Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you whose eyes

Shall behold God and never taste death’s woe.

But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space,

For if above all these my sins abound,

’Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace

When we are there; here on this lowly ground

Teach me how to repent; for that’s as good

As if thou’hadst sealed my pardon with thy blood.

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,

And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well

And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;

That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend

Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

I, like an usurped town to another due,

Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;

Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,

But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain,

But am betrothed unto your enemy;

Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I,

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

William Habington 

To Castara. Upon Beauty

Castara, see that dust, the sportive wind

So wantons with. ’Tis happ’ly all you’ll find 

Left of some beauty: and how still it flies,

To trouble, as it did in life, our eyes.

O empty boast of flesh! Though our heirs gild

The far fetch Phrigian marble, which shall build

A burthen to our ashes, yet will death

Betray them to the sport of every breath.

Dost thou, poor relic of our frailty, still

Swell up with glory? Or is it thy skill,

To mock weak man, whom every wind of praise

Into the air, doth ’bove his centre raise.

If so, mock on. And tell him that his lust

To beauty’s madness. For it courts but dust.

John Milton 

Sonnet 19 

When I consider how my light is spent,

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,

And that one Talent which is death to hide

Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, lest he returning chide;

“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”

I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent

That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need

Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state

Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed

And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:

They also serve who only stand and wait.”

Sonnet 23 

Methought I saw my late espoused saint

Brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave,

Whom Jove’s great son to her glad husband gave,

Rescued from death by force, though pale and faint.

Mine, as whom wash’d from spot of child-bed taint

Purification in the old Law did save,

And such as yet once more I trust to have

Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint,

Came vested all in white, pure as her mind;

Her face was veiled, yet to my fancied sight

Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined

So clear as in no face with more delight.

But Oh! as to embrace me she inclined,

I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night.

Aphra Behn 

Epitaph on the Tombstone of a Child, the Last of Seven that Died Before

This little, silent, gloomy monument, 

Contains all that was sweet and innocent;

The softest prattler that e’er found a tongue,

His voice was music and his words a song,

Which now each listening angel smiling hears,

Such pretty harmonies compose the spheres;

Wanton as unfledged cupids, ere their charms

Has learned the little arts of doing harms,

Fair as young cherubins, as soft and kind,

And though translated could not be refined,

The seventh dear pledge the nuptial joys had given,

Toiled here on earth, retired to rest in heaven, 

Where they the shining host of angels fill,

Spread their gay wings before the throne, and smile.