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.
As withered weed through cruell winters tine,
That feeles the warmth of sunny beames reflection,
Liftes up his head, that did before decline
And gins to spread his leafe before the faire sunshine.
A bold bad man, that dar'd to call by name
Great Gorgon, Prince of darknesse and dead night.
I learned have, not to despise,
What ever thing seemes small in common eyes.
Ill can he rule the great, that cannot reach the small.
I hate the day, because it lendeth light
To see all things, but not my love to see.
Into the woods thenceforth in hast she went,
To seeke for hearbes, that mote him remedy;
For she of hearbes had great intendiment,
Taught of the Nymphe, which from her infancy
Her nourced had in trew Nobility:
There, whether it divine Tobacco were,
Or Panachaea, or Polygony,
She found, and brought it to her patient deare
Who al this while lay bleeding out his hart-bloud neare.