Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.

Delia

To the Right Honourable the Lady Mary, Countess of Pembroke

Samuel Daniel (1562–1619)

WONDER of these! Glory of other times!

O Thou, whom Envy, ev’n, is forced t’admire!

Great Patroness of these my humble rhymes,

Which Thou, from out thy greatness, dost inspire!

Since only Thou hast deigned to raise them higher;

Vouchsafe now, to accept them as thine own!

Begotten by thy hand, and my desire;

Wherein my zeal, and thy great might is shown.

And seeing this unto the world is known;

O leave not, still, to grace thy work in me!

Let not the quickening seed be overthrown,

Of that which may be born to honour Thee!

Whereof, the travail I may challenge mine;

But yet the glory, Madam! must be thine!

Fifty-five Sonnets follow this Dedication, in the 1594 edition of Daniel’s DELIA and ROSAMUND AUGMENTED. The edition was designed by the poet to be the final revision of his Sonnets to Delia, fifty of which had already appeared in a separate volume in 1592. One was now dropped and six were added. Twenty-two of the Sonnets included in the 1594 edition of Delia were originally published (in the case of three with verbal differences) among a series of twenty-eight forming an appendix to the 1591 quarto edition of Sidney’s ASTROPHEL and STELLA. Of these twenty-two poems, the three, which underwent much verbal change, are again reprinted here (see Nos. XIV., XLIII., and LV.), but the rest are now omitted.