LiederNet logo

CONTENTS

×
  • Home | Introduction
  • Composers (20,110)
  • Text Authors (19,487)
  • Go to a Random Text
  • What’s New
  • A Small Tour
  • FAQ & Links
  • Donors
  • DONATE

UTILITIES

  • Search Everything
  • Search by Surname
  • Search by Title or First Line
  • Search by Year
  • Search by Collection

CREDITS

  • Emily Ezust
  • Contributors (1,114)
  • Contact Information
  • Bibliography

  • Copyright Statement
  • Privacy Policy

Follow us on Facebook

by Edmund Spenser (1552 - 1599)

Sonnet XL
Language: English 
Mark when she smiles with amiable cheer,
And tell me whereto can ye liken it;
When on each eyelid sweetly do appear
An hundred graces as in shade to sit.
Likest it seemeth, in my simple wit,
Unto the fair sunshine in summer’s day;
That, when a dreadful storm away is flit,
Through the broad world doth spread his goodly ray;
At sight whereof, each bird that sits on spray,
And every beast that to his den was fled,
Comes forth afresh out of their late dismay,
And to the light lift up their drooping head.
  So my storm-beaten heart likewise is cheered
  With that sunshine, when cloudy looks are cleared.

Text Authorship:

  • by Edmund Spenser (1552 - 1599), "Sonnet XL", appears in Amoretti and Epithalamion [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

  • by Edmund Duncan Rubbra (1901 - 1986), "Sonnet XL", op. 43 no. 5 (1935), published 1942 [ tenor and string quartet ], from Amoretti: Five Sonnets (Second Series), no. 5 [sung text not yet checked]

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website: 2022-01-31
Line count: 14
Word count: 111

Gentle Reminder

This website began in 1995 as a personal project by Emily Ezust, who has been working on it full-time without a salary since 2008. Our research has never had any government or institutional funding, so if you found the information here useful, please consider making a donation. Your help is greatly appreciated!
–Emily Ezust, Founder

Donate

We use cookies for internal analytics and to earn much-needed advertising revenue. (Did you know you can help support us by turning off ad-blockers?) To learn more, see our Privacy Policy. To learn how to opt out of cookies, please visit this site.

I acknowledge the use of cookies

Contact
Copyright
Privacy

Copyright © 2025 The LiederNet Archive

Site redesign by Shawn Thuris