And to be praised of ages yet to be.”
(ci.)
Again, Shakespeare describes how, when absent from his friend, he is able to play with the flowers as shadows of his friend’s beauty.
“They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seem’d it Winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.”
(xcviii.)
In Spenser the lover is able to make an appeal for pity by reference to the Platonic conception of the idea of the beloved which the lover is supposed to behold in his soul.
“Leave lady in your glasse of christall clene,