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His heart sigh'd and fain would show
That which all the world did know:
His heart sigh'd the sighs of fear,
And durst not tell her, love was there.
But as thoughts in troubled sleep
Dreaming fear, and fearing weep,
When for help they fain would cry,
Cannot speak, and helpless lie,

So while his heart full of pain
Would itself in words complain,
Pain of all pains, lover's fear,
Makes his heart to silence swear.

Strife at length those dreams doth break,
His despair taught Fear thus speak:

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Fruit of our boughs, whence heaven maketh rods, And babies too for child-thoughts that aspire: Who sees their glories, on the earth must pry; Who seeks true glory must look to the sky.

say, if this false be proved, Let me not love or not be loved! But when Reason did invite

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The next is a delicate little strain that asserts man's constancy in love :

CŒLICA AND PHILOCELL.

In the time when herbs and flowers,
Springing out of melting powers,
Teach the earth that heat and rain
Do make Cupid live again;

Late when Sol, like great hearts, shows

Largest as he lowest goes;
Colica with Philocell
In fellowship together fell.
Colica her skin was fair,
Dainty auburn was her hair;
Her hair Nature dyed brown

To become the mourning gown

Of Hope's death, which to her eyes

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Offers thoughts for sacrifice.

Philocell was true and kind,

Poor, but not of poorest mind:

Though mischance, to harm affected,
Hides and holdeth worth suspected,
He, good shepherd, loved well;
But Colica scorn'd Philocell.
Through enamell'd meads they went,
Quiet she, he passion-rent.

Her worths to him hope did move;

Her worths made him fear to love.

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And of far more estimation

Is creator than creation:

Then, dear, though I worthless be,

Yet let them to you worthy be,

Whose meek thoughts are highly graced By your image in them placed."

Herewithal, like one opprest With self-burthens, he did rest ; Like amazed were his senses, Both with pleasure and offences.

Coelica's cold answers show That which fools feel, wise men know:

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Such men as these--Raleigh and Philip Sidney, Greville and Dyer-were the near friends of Spenser. Spenser, while earning his bread as an English official in Ireland, worked on at the "Faerie Queene," a poem of which enough had been written before he went to Ireland to enable his friend Harvey to express opinions about it. He had written also comedies in the manner of Ariosto which Harvey thought much better than the "Faerie Queene," but which the poet himself did not care to print. After serving for a time as private secretary to Lord Grey of Wilton, Spenser was, from 1581 to 1588, Clerk of Degrees and Recognizances in the Irish Court of Chancery, and for a few months in 1581 he had a lease of the lands and abbey of Enniscorthy in Wexford. He gave up the Clerkship in the Chancery Court for the office of Clerk to the Council of Munster, which he held till about the time of the publication of the first three books of his "Faerie Queene" in the earlier part of the year 1590. In 1589 Raleigh had come into his neighbourhood, and, with Raleigh, Spenser came to London to arrange the publication of his poem, and present it to the Queen.

Spenser's whole plan comprehended two great poems, in one of which Arthur was to appear as Prince, in the other as King. One-that of which he has left us half-was to be in twelve books, and (corresponding to Ethics, or a study of the virtues of a man) was in allegorical form to paint man through all his powers for good striving heavenward. The Faerie Queen-Gloriana-for whom the knight who typifies each virtue is militant on earth, is the Glory of God. Each Virtue in combat with its opposing vices and impediments, also typified in romance forms, finds at some point of the conflict a danger from the failure of its unassisted strength, and is then helped by the intervention of Prince Arthur, who bears the shield of adamant, the shield of the Grace of God. In the working out of the allegory, not only is every page alive with the most praetical reference to the soul's battle in this life, but the battle Spenser painted was that of a soul born to the England of his time. The "Faerie Queene," rightly

Aristotle in lus

2 Though Virtue of extremities the middle be. "Ethics," book ii., defined Virtue to be "a habit, with deliberate preference, in a mean relating to ourselves, a mean defined by reason, and as the prudent man would define it. It is a mean habit between two vices, one on the side of excess, the other on the side of des. ciency; and because one set of vices falls short, and the other exceeds propriety, both in passions and actions, while Virtue discovers the mean and prefers it. Wherefore, according to its essence, and the definition which declares its nature, Virtue is a mean habit; but according to its excellence and goodness, it is a summit."

read, is the poem of a grand Elizabethan Puritan, intensely interested in the life of his own day, and never forgetting what he held to be its vital conflicts and its most immediate needs. How practical a book it is, in its essence, we shall find when we come to speak of it among our longer poems. In the companion poem to that which he left unfinished, Spenser meant to illustrate the science of life in community-Politics-with Arthur as king. In that he would have given us his image of human society bound firmly together by the Christian spirit in obedience to the laws of God.

The first three books of the "Faerie Queene," published in 1590, set in the midst of the life out of which the poem came, were received most heartily. No Elizabethan reader failed to see under the surface references of compliment to Elizabeth, and under surface forms of the sort of romance then popular, the relation of the poem to the highest hopes of Englishmen for this world and the next. What was apparent in the first three books was, it may be added, still more apparent in the next three, published six years later; especially in the fifth book, which was as direct as the first had been in its application to current events, and had in its allegory fewer depths.

Tears of the Muses," a lament for the stupidities of men, and for all that degraded in his day the pure exercise of thought.

One of the most interesting pieces in this collection was his "Mother Hubberd's Tale," a story told in Chaucer's manner, in the rhymed couplets first used by him, and called, from his use of them in describing the ride of his Pilgrims to Canterbury, "riding rhyme." It was a cheery, easy, homely measure, destined afterwards to be dressed in a fullbottomed French wig, taught to puff and blow with conscious dignity and walk as if all its bones were one bone, before its re-introduction to its native land as the Heroic measure just arrived from France. Spenser, in his "Mother Hubberd's Tale," used this measure for quick and lively satire on corruptions in Church and State, by showing how a Fox and an Ape went out into the world, and what they did. the Fox is a priest, and the Ape his parish-clerk; now the Ape is a grand person at court, and the Fox his man, gathering bribes for him from poor suitors; now the Ape catches the Lion sleeping, steals his skin, and plays King in it with the Fox for minister. When the Ape stands for a courtier of meaner sort, Spenser, with Philip Sidney in his mind, paints the true courtier in a passage so complete in itself that we may fairly take it from its context :

Now

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PUBLISHER'S MARK OF WILLIAM PONSONBY ON THE TITLE-PAGE OF THE SECOND PART OF THE "FAERIE QUEENE," 1596.

Queen Elizabeth promptly and heartily rewarded Spenser for the first instalment of his poem by giving him, in the spring of the year 1591, a pension from the Crown of £50 a year. He wrote other verse before he left London, his "Ruins of Time," addressed to Sidney's sister, the Countess of Pembroke, on her brother's death and other signs of the world's passing glory; also his "Daphnaida," an elegy on the death of a friend's wife; and he enabled a bookseller to publish under the title of "Complaints, containing sundrie small Poems of the World's Vanitie," several pieces written by him in earlier years. One lately written was "The

And thereof gathers for himself the best.
He will not creep, nor crouch with feignéd face,
But walks upright with comely steadfast pace,
And unto all doth yield due courtesie;
But not with kisséd hand below the knee,
As that same apish crew is wont to do:
For he disdains himself t' embase thereto.
He hates foul leasings and vile flattery,
Two filthy blots in noble gentery;
And loathful idleness he doth detest,
The cankerworm of every gentle breast,
The which to banish with fair exercise
Of knightly feats, he daily doth devise:
Now menaging the mouths of stubborn steeds,
Now practising the proof of warlike deeds,
Now his bright arms assaying, now his spear,
Now the nigh-aiméd ring away to bear.

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1 The nigh-aimed ring. Tilting at the ring is described in Strutt's "Sports and Pastimes of the People of England," with illustrations from Pluvinel's "Art de monter à cheval." An upright post was fixed near the end of a course carefully prepared and measured. At the upper part of the post were holes, like those for the pegs of an

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