| Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904. | | | | Amoretti and Epithalamion | | Sonnet XXIII. Penelope, for her Ulysses’ sake | | Edmund Spenser (1552?–1599) |
| | | PENELOPE, for her Ulysses’ sake, | |
| Devis’d a web her wooers to deceive; | |
| In which the work that she all day did make, | |
| The same at night she did again unreave: | |
| Such subtle craft my damsel doth conceive, | 5 |
| Th’ importune suit of my desire to shun: | |
| For all that I in many days do weave, | |
| In one short hour I find by her undone. | |
| So, when I think to end that I begun, | |
| I must begin and never bring to end: | 10 |
| For with one look she spills that long I spun; | |
| And with one word my whole year’s work doth rend. | |
| Such labour like the spider’s web I find, | |
| Whose fruitless work is broken with least wind. | | | | |
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