| Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904. | | | | Amoretti and Epithalamion | | Sonnet XLI. Is it her nature, or is it her will | | Edmund Spenser (1552?–1599) |
| | | IS it her nature, or is it her will, | |
| To be so cruel to an humbled foe? | |
| If nature; then she may it mend with skill: | |
| If will; then she at will may will forego. | |
| But if her nature and her will be so, | 5 |
| That she will plague the man that loves her most, | |
| And take delight t’ increase a wretch’s woe; | |
| Then all her nature’s goodly gifts are lost: | |
| And that same glorious beauty’s idle boast | |
| Is but a bait such wretches to beguile, | 10 |
| As, being long in her love’s tempest toss’d, | |
| She means at last to make her piteous spoil. | |
| O fairest fair! let never it be named, | |
| That so fair beauty was so foully shamed. | | | | |
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