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.
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.
I have at last come to the end of the Faerie Queene: and though I say "at last", I almost wish he had lived to write six books more as he had hoped to do — so much have I enjoyed it.
And is there care in Heaven? And is there love
In heavenly spirits to these Creatures bace?
Behold, whiles she before the altar stands,
Hearing the holy priest that to her speakes,
And blesseth her with his two happy hands.
I was promised on a time
To have reason for my rhyme;
From that time unto this season,
I received nor rhyme nor reason.
As the great eye of heaven, shyned bright,
And made a sunshine in the shady place.
Death slue not him, but he made death his ladder to the skies.
Dan Chaucer, well of English undefyled,
On Fames eternall beadroll worthie to be fyled.
The Fairie Queene makes cinema out of the west's primary principle: to see is to know; to know is to control. The Spenserian eye cuts, wounds, rapes.
As when in Cymbrian plaine
An heard of bulles, whom kindly rage doth sting,
Doe for the milky mothers want complaine,Mbr<And fill the fieldes with troublous bellowing.
A monster, which the Blatant beast men call,
A dreadfull feend of gods and men ydrad.
Through thicke and thin, both over banke and bush
In hope her to attaine by hooke or crooke.
The gentle minde by gentle deeds is knowne.
For a man by nothing is so well bewrayd,
As by his manners.
Tell her the joyous Time will not be staid,
Unlesse she doe him by the forelock take.
For of the soule the bodie forme doth take;
For the soule is forme, and doth the bodie make.
And as she lookt about, she did behold,
How over that same dore was likewise writ,
Be bold, be bold, and every where Be bold,
That much she muz'd, yet could not construe it
By any ridling skill, or commune wit.
At last she spyde at that same roomes upper end,
Another yron dore, on which was writ,
Be not too bold.
Ay me, how many perils doe enfold
The righteous man, to make him daily fall!
Roses red and violets blew,
And all the sweetest flowres that in the forrest grew.