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Biese, Alfred, 1856-1930

"The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and Modern Times"

...
And yet, by Heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied by false compare.
His lady-love is a mirror in which the whole world is reflected:
Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind....
For if it see the rudest or gentlest sight,
The most sweet favour or deformed'st creature,
The mountain or the sea, the day or night,
The crow or dove, it shapes them to your feature.
(Sonnet 113.)
When she leaves him it seems winter even in spring:
'For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And thou away, the very birds are mute.'
(Sonnet 97.)
Here, as in the dramas,[2] contrasts in Nature are often used to
point contrasts in life:
How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame
Which like a canker in the fragrant rose
Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name!
O in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose!
(Sonnet 95.)
and
No more be grieved at that which thou hast done;
Roses have thorns and silver fountains mud;
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.
(Sonnet 35.)
In an opposite sense is Sonnet 70:
The ornament of beauty is suspect
A crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air,
For canker vice the sweetest buds did love,
And thou presentest a pure unstained prime.
Sonnet 7 has:
Lo! in the orient when the gracious light
Lifts up his burning head, each under eye
Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,
Serving with looks his sacred majesty.


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