Happy ye leaues when as those lilly hands,
Which hold my life in their dead doing might,
Shall handle you and hold in loues soft bands,
lyke captiues trembling at the victors sight.
These are the opening lines of "Sonnet-I" which is taken from Spenser's sonnet sequence, "Amoretti". In these lines the speaker, in the role of a lover, addresses the pages on which he writes the love poems in a very sublime tone. He humbles down as a captive and raises his beloved to the status of a victor.
These lines introduce the theme of love in the Elizabethan tradition. The speaker addresses the pages on which the poem is written. He says that the leaves will be happy when his beloved's soft and white hands will touch them with the delicate emotion of love. He feels that his life is in her tight grip. He anticipates that when she will hold these pages they will shake in fear like the prisoners who tremble at the sight of their captors. Here the poet speaks about his beloved from a long distance. He appreciates her hands' colour and brightness suggesting that she is a goddess to him and he is her worshipper. He portrays her as a victor and belittles himself as a captive suggesting that in the war of love she won the battle and now he is a captive to her. This indicates that he is in deep love with her and the fulfilment of the love absolutely depends on her. It is for this reason, he says, her grip of love will not leave him until his death. In other words, he is so deeply in love with her that he will never be free from her attraction. This attitude to love is typically Elizabethan.
