They are but dressings of a former sight
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he “dated” sonnet so-called (107), about the “mortal moon,” hadbeen here and there asserted to refer to the Armada and its defeat m1588, but assertion is nothing. If the Spanish fleet did not in actualityapproach in crescent form, as Hotson supposes, yet that the Englishthought it did he proves with five quotations calling it a moon (towhich, since, others have been added). More cogent still, since 1475European prophets, Protestants, astronomers had been predicting adoom, a wonder, for ’88; and for decades afterward England wouldrejoice over the catastrophe (designed by some “to be the end of theworld”— 163 1 ) prophesied and avoided. Not mine owne feares, nor the propheticke souleOf the wide world, dreaming on things to come. Can yet the lease of my true loue controule,
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