Edmund Spenser (1552 – 1599)
English poet, who wrote such pastorals as The Shepheardes Calendar, Astrophell and Colin Clouts Come Home Againe, but is most famous for the multi-layered allegorical romance The Faerie Queene.
A Gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine.
For we by conquest, of our soveraine might,
And by eternall doome of Fate's decree,
Have wonne the Empire of the Heavens bright.
Entire affection hateth nicer hands.
No daintie flowre or herbe that growes on grownd,
No arborett with painted blossoms drest
And smelling sweete, but there it might be fownd
To bud out faire, and throwe her sweete smels al arownd.
The noblest mind the best contentment has.
Is not short paine well borne, that brings long ease,
And layes the soul to sleepe in quiet grave?
Sleepe after toyle, port after stormie seas,
Ease after warre, death after life does greatly please.
O happy earth,
Whereon thy innocent feet doe ever tread!
For all that faire is, is by nature good;
That is a signe to know the gentle blood.
The Faerie Queene is the most extended and extensive meditation on sex in the history of poetry. It charts the entire erotic spectrum, a great chain of being rising from matter to spirit, from the coarsest lust to chastity and romantic idealism. The poem’s themes of sex and politics are parallel: the psyche, like society, must be disciplined by good government. Spenser agrees with the classical and Christian philosophers on the primacy of reason over animal appetites. He looks forward to the Romantic poets, however, in the way that he shows the sex impulse as ultimately daemonic and barbaric, breeding witches and sorcerers of evil allure. Like the Odyssey, The Faerie Queene is a heroic epic in which the masculine must evade female traps or delays.
How oft do they their silver bowers leave
To come to succour us that succour want!
Sweete Themmes runne softly, till I end my Song.
Who will not mercie unto others show,
How can he mercy ever hope to have?
Fierce warres and faithfull loves shall moralize my song.
But of his cheere did seeme too solemne sad;
Yet nothing did he dread, but ever was ydrad.
Her berth was of the wombe of morning dew,
And her conception of the joyous Prime.
Me seemes the world is runne quite out of square,
From the first point of his appointed sourse,
And being once amisse growes daily wourse and wourse.
And all for love, and nothing for reward.
Eftsoones they heard a most melodious sound.
Full little knowest thou that hast not tride,
What hell it is in suing long to bide:
To loose good dayes, that might be better spent;
To wast long nights in pensive discontent;
To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow;
To feed on hope, to pine with feare and sorrow.
. . . . . . . . .
To fret thy soule with crosses and with cares;
To eate thy heart through comfortlesse dispaires; 13
To fawne, to crowche, to waite, to ride, to ronne,
To spend, to give, to want, to be undonne.
Unhappie wight, borne to desastrous end,
That doth his life in so long tendance spend!
What more felicitie can fall to creature
Than to enjoy delight with libertie,
And to be lord of all the workes of Nature,
To raine in th' aire from earth to highest skie,
To feed on flowres and weeds of glorious feature.