Complete Works of Edmund Spenser

by Edmund Spenser

That frosen horror ran through everie part.

  So inlie greeving in my groning brest,

  And deepelie muzing at her doubtfull speach, 485

  Whose meaning much I labored foorth to wreste,

  Being above my slender reasons reach,

  At length, by demonstration me to teach,

  Before mine eies strange sights presented were,

  Like tragicke pageants seeming to appeare. 490

  I

  I saw an image, all of massie gold,

  Placed on high upon an altare faire,

  That all which did the same from farre beholde

  Might worship it, and fall on lowest staire.

  Not that great idoll might with this compaire, 495

  To which th’ Assyrian tyrant would have made

  The holie brethren falslie to have praid.

  But th’ altare on the which this image staid

  Was (O great pitie!) built of brickle clay,

  That shortly the foundation decaid, 500

  With showres of heaven and tempests worne away:

  Then downe it fell, and low in ashes lay,

  Scorned of everie one which by it went;

  That I, it seing, dearelie did lament.

  II

  Next unto this a statelie towre appeared, 505

  Built all of richest stone that might bee found,

  And nigh unto the heavens in height upreared,

  But placed on a plot of sandie ground:

  Not that great towre which is so much renownd

  For tongues confusion in Holie Writ, 510

  King Ninus worke, might be compar’d to it.

  But O vaine labours of terrestriall wit,

  That buildes so stronglie on so frayle a soyle,

  As with each storme does fall away and flit,

  And gives the fruit of all your travailes toyle, 515

  To be the pray of Tyme, and Fortunes spoyle!

  I saw this towre fall sodainlie to dust,

  That nigh with griefe thereof my heart was brust.

  III

  Then did I see a pleasant paradize,

  Full of sweete flowres and daintiest delights, 520

  Such as on earth man could not more devize,

  With pleasures choyce to feed his cheerefull sprights:

  Not that which Merlin by his magicke slights

  Made for the gentle Squire, to entertaine

  His fayre Belphœbe, could this gardine staine. 525

  But O short pleasure bought with lasting paine!

  Why will hereafter anie flesh delight

  In earthlie blis, and joy in pleasures vaine,

  Since that I sawe this gardine wasted quite,

  That where it was scarce seemed anie sight? 530

  That I, which once that beautie did beholde,

  Could not from teares my melting eyes withholde.

  IV

  Soone after this a giaunt came in place,

  Of wondrous power, and of exceeding stature,

  That none durst vewe the horror of his face; 535

  Yet was he milde of speach, and meeke of nature.

  Not he, which in despight of his Creatour

  With railing tearmes defied the Jewish hoast,

  Might with this mightie one in hugenes boast.

  For from the one he could to th’ other coast 540

  Stretch his strong thighes, and th’ ocæan overstride,

  And reatch his hand into his enemies hoast.

  But see the end of pompe and fleshlie pride:

  One of his feete unwares from him did slide,

  That downe hee fell into the deepe abisse, 545

  Where drownd with him is all his earthlie blisse.

  V

  Then did I see a bridge, made all of golde,

  Over the sea from one to other side,

  Withouten prop or pillour it t’ upholde,

  But like the coulored rainbowe arched wide: 550

  Not that great arche which Trajan edifide,

  To be a wonder to all age ensuing,

  Was matchable to this in equall vewing.

  But ah! what bootes it to see earthlie thing

  In glorie or in greatnes to excell, 555

  Sith time doth greatest things to ruine bring?

  This goodlie bridge, one foote not fastned well,

  Gan faile, and all the rest downe shortlie fell,

  Ne of so brave a building ought remained,

  That griefe thereof my spirite greatly pained. 560

  VI

  I saw two beares, as white as anie milke,

  Lying together in a mightie cave,

  Of milde aspect, and haire as soft as silke,

  That salvage nature seemed not to have,

  Nor after greedie spoyle of blood to crave: 565

  Two fairer beasts might not elswhere be found,

  Although the compast world were sought around.

  But what can long abide above this ground

  In state of blis, or stedfast happinesse?

  The cave in which these beares lay sleeping sound 570

  Was but earth, and with her owne weightinesse

  Upon them fell, and did unwares oppresse;

  That, for great sorrow of their sudden fate,

  Henceforth all worlds felicitie I hate.

  ¶ Much was I troubled in my heavie spright, 575

  At sight of these sad spectacles forepast,

  That all my senses were bereaved quight,

  And I in minde remained sore agast,

  Distraught twixt feare and pitie; when at last

  I heard a voyce, which loudly to me called, 580

  That with the suddein shrill I was appalled.

  ‘Behold,’ said it, ‘and by ensample see,

  That all is vanitie and griefe of minde,

  Ne other comfort in this world can be,

  But hope of heaven, and heart to God inclinde; 585

  For all the rest must needs be left behinde.’

  With that it bad me to the other side

  To cast mine eye, where other sights I spide.

  I

  Upon that famous rivers further shore,

  There stood a snowie swan, of heavenly hiew 590

  And gentle kinde, as ever fowle afore;

  A fairer one in all the goodlie criew

  Of white Strimonian brood might no man view:

  There he most sweetly sung the prophecie

  Of his owne death in dolefull elegie. 595

  At last, when all his mourning melodie

  He ended had, that both the shores resounded,

  Feeling the fit that him forewarnd to die,

  With loftie flight above the earth he bounded,

  And out of sight to highest heaven mounted, 600

  Where now he is become an heavenly signe:

  There now the joy is his, here sorrow mine.

  II

  Whilest thus I looked, loe! adowne the lee

  I sawe an harpe, stroong all with silver twyne,

  And made of golde and costlie yvorie, 605

  Swimming, that whilome seemed to have been

  The harpe on which Dan Orpheus was seene

  Wylde beasts and forrests after him to lead,

  But was th’ harpe of Philisides now dead.

  At length out of the river it was reard, 610

  And borne above the cloudes to be divin’d,

  Whilst all the way most heavenly noyse was heard

  Of the strings, stirred with the warbling wind,

  That wrought both joy and sorrow in my mind:

  So now in heaven a signe it doth appeare, 615

  The Harpe well knowne beside the Northern Beare.

  III

  Soone after this I saw on th’ other side

  A curious coffer made of heben wood,

  That in it did most precious treasure hide,

  Exceeding all this baser worldes good: 620

  Yet through the overflowing of the flood


  It almost drowned was and done to nought,

  That sight thereof much griev’d my pensive thought.

  At length, when most in perill it was brought,

  Two angels, downe descending with swift flight, 625

  Out of the swelling streame it lightly caught,

  And twixt their blessed armes it carried quight

  Above the reach of anie living sight:

  So now it is transform’d into that starre,

  In which all heavenly treasures locked are. 630

  IV

  Looking aside I saw a stately bed,

  Adorned all with costly cloth of gold,

  That might for anie princes couche be red,

  And deckt with daintie flowres, as if it shold

  Be for some bride, her joyous night to hold: 635

  Therein a goodly virgine sleeping lay;

  A fairer wight saw never summers day.

  I heard a voyce that called farre away,

  And her awaking bad her quickly dight,

  For lo! her bridegrome was in readie ray 640

  To come to her, and seeke her loves delight:

  With that she started up with cherefull sight;

  When suddeinly both bed and all was gone,

  And I in languour left there all alone.

  V

  Still as I gazed, I beheld where stood 645

  A knight all arm’d, upon a winged steed,

  The same that was bred of Medusaes blood,

  On which Dan Perseus, borne of heavenly seed,

  The faire Andromeda from perill freed:

  Full mortally this knight ywounded was, 650

  That streames of blood foorth flowed on the gras.

  Yet was he deckt (small joy to him, alas!)

  With manie garlands for his victories,

  And with rich spoyles, which late he did purchas

  Through brave atcheivements from his enemies: 655

  Fainting at last through long infirmities,

  He smote his steed, that straight to heaven him bore,

  And left me here his losse for to deplore.

  VI

  Lastly, I saw an arke of purest golde

  Upon a brazen pillour standing hie, 660

  Which th’ ashes seem’d of some great prince to hold,

  Enclosde therein for endles memorie

  Of him whom all the world did glorifie:

  Seemed the heavens with the earth did disagree,

  Whether should of those ashes keeper bee. 665

  At last me seem’d wing footed Mercurie,

  From heaven descending to appease their strife,

  The arke did beare with him above the skie,

  And to those ashes gave a second life,

  To live in heaven, where happines is rife: 670

  At which the earth did grieve exceedingly,

  And I for dole was almost like to die.

  L’ENVOY

  Immortall spirite of Philisides,

  Which now art made the heavens ornament,

  That whilome wast the worldes chiefst riches, 675

  Give leave to him that lov’de thee to lament

  His losse, by lacke of thee to heaven hent,

  And with last duties of this broken verse,

  Broken with sighes, to decke thy sable herse.

  And ye, faire ladie, th’ honor of your daies 680

  And glorie of the world, your high thoughts scorne,

  Vouchsafe this moniment of his last praise

  With some few silver dropping teares t’ adorne:

  And as ye be of heavenlie off-spring borne,

  So unto heaven let your high minde aspire, 685

  And loath this drosse of sinfull worlds desire.

  FINIS.

  The Teares of the Muses

  THE TEARES OF THE MUSES

  BY ED. SP.

  LONDON

  IMPRINTED FOR WILLIAM PONSONBIE, DWELLING IN PAULES CHURCHYARD AT THE SIGNE OF THE BISHOPS HEAD

  1591

  TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE

  THE LADIE STRANGE

  MOST brave and noble Ladie, the things that make ye so much honored of the world as ye bee, are such as (without my simple lines testimonie) are throughlie knowen to all men; namely, your excellent beautie, your vertuous behavior, and your noble match with that most honourable lord, the verie paterne of right nobilitie: but the causes for which ye have thus deserved of me to be honoured (if honour it be at all) are, both your particular bounties, and also some private bands of affinitie, which it hath pleased your Ladiship to acknowledge. Of which whenas I found my selfe in no part worthie, I devised this last slender meanes, both to intimate my humble affection to your Ladiship, and also to make the same universallie knowen to the world; that by honouring you they might know me, and by knowing me they might honor you. Vouchsafe, noble Lady, to accept this simple remembrance, thogh not worthy of your self, yet such as perhaps, by good acceptance therof, ye may hereafter cull out a more meet and memorable evidence of your own excellent deserts. So recommending the same to your Ladiships good liking, I humbly take leave.

  Your Ladiships humbly ever

  Ed. Sp.

  [To what period this poem may belong has been somewhat disputed. On the whole, it would seem, like ‘Mother Hubberd’s Tale,’ to be early work revised, for though the allusions in the lament of Thalia refer that passage to 1589 or 1590, there are good grounds for believing that the poem first took form before 1580. Its doleful account of the state of literature, for instance, is quite at odds with that survey in Colin Clout’s Come Home Again (of 1591) wherein Spenser deals so sympathetically with his fellow poets, and is not unlike in tone to various passages in the Calendar. One can hardly understand, moreover, how, in 1590, even as a matter of convention, he could take so dismal a view of English literature. In 1580, on the other hand, before Sidney, Greene, Marlowe, and their fellows of the first great generation had begun to write, when, Spenser himself excepted, Lyly with his Euphues was the one brilliant name in English letters, such a view is quite conceivable. The matter might be argued much further, to the same result. The general tone of the poem, its mental attitude, cannot but impress a modern reader somewhat unpleasantly. The complaint that ‘mightie peeres’ no longer care for the immortality which only poets can confer, that poets and scholars, ‘the learned,’ are left without patronage, may be set down partly to a trying personal experience. The note of contempt, however, and of arrogance that one is glad to believe youthful, the complaint of universal vulgarity, the cry that Ignorance and Barbarism have quite laid waste the fair realm of the Muses — all this comes near, in the end, to seeming insufferable. If the Areopagus, the select literary club in which Sidney and Dyer and Fulke Greville, with perhaps Spenser himself, discussed the condition of English letters and planned great reforms, if this cénacle is fairly represented by ‘The Tears of the Muses,’ it must have been, one thinks, a more than usually supercilious clique of young radicals. Yet what may be distasteful in the poem is not so much the underlying opinions, which for 1579 or 1580 are quite intelligible, as the particular tone or mood. In this one almost suspects an echo of Ronsard. For in the great movement by which, thirty years before the Areopagus and in much the same way, the Pléiade endeavored to regenerate French literature, Ronsard is notably distinguished from his colleagues by an odd faculty for making their common views offensive or ridiculous. His rampant egotism and utter deficiency in the sense of humor lured him at times, like his greater descendant Victor Hugo, into strange extravagances. Now, the members of the Areopagus knew the poets of the Pléiade well, especially Ronsard and Du Bellay. They seem to have felt that their own problem in England was not unlike that which these men had met in France. In them they found ideals with which they sympathized, opinions which seemed to be of value for their own difficulties. That the poet was directly inspired of God (or the gods), that great men could obtain immortality from the poets alone, that poetry must go hand in hand with learni
ng, that the arch enemy of the Muses was Ignorance, that poetry in their day languished because the great were given over to luxury and the vulgar would listen only to a horde of unlearned and base rhymesters, — these theories of the Pléiade and various precepts for the elevation of their own mother tongue to a place beside the tongues of Greece and Rome were caught at by the youthful members of the Areopagus with very lively interest. In the work of Spenser they may be traced unmistakably, chiefly in ‘October,’ ‘The Ruins of Time,’ and ‘The Tears of the Muses.’ This last, unhappily, voices them in a tone which, as so often in Ronsard and rarely in Du Bellay, makes sympathy quite impossible.]

  THE TEARES OF THE MUSES

  REHEARSE to me, ye sacred sisters nine,

  The golden brood of great Apolloes wit,

  Those piteous plaints and sorowfull sad tine,

  Which late ye powred forth as ye did sit

  Beside the silver springs of Helicone, 5

  Making your musick of hart-breaking mone.

  For since the time that Phœbus foolish sonne,

  Ythundered through Joves avengefull wrath,

  For traversing the charret of the Sunne

  Beyond the compasse of his pointed path, 10

  Of you, his mournfull sisters, was lamented,

  Such mournfull tunes were never since invented.

  Nor since that faire Calliope did lose

  Her loved twinnes, the dearlings of her joy,

  Her Palici, whom her unkindly foes, 15

  The Fatall Sisters, did for spight destroy,

  Whom all the Muses did bewaile long space,

  Was ever heard such wayling in this place.

  For all their groves, which with the heavenly noyses

  Of their sweete instruments were wont to sound, 20

  And th’ hollow hills, from which their silver voyces

  Were wont redoubled echoes to rebound,

  Did now rebound with nought but rufull cries,

  And yelling shrieks throwne up into the skies.

  The trembling streames which wont in chanels cleare 25

  To romble gently downe with murmur soft,

  And were by them right tunefull taught to beare

  A bases part amongst their consorts oft,

  Now forst to overflowe with brackish teares,

  With troublous noyse did dull their daintie eares. 30

  The joyous nymphes and lightfoote faeries

  Which thether came to heare their musick sweet,

  And to the measure of their melodies

  Did learne to move their nimble shifting feete,

  Now hearing them so heavily lament, 35

  Like heavily lamenting from them went.