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12,000 acres. The poet was obliged to reside on his estate, as this was one of the conditions of the grant; and he accordingly repaired to Ireland, and took up his abode in Kilcolman Castle, near Doneraile, which had been one of the ancient strongholds or appanages of the Earls of Desmond. The poet's castle stood in the midst of a large plain, by the side of a lake; the river Mulla ran through his grounds, and a chain of mountains at a distance seemed to bulwark in the romantic retreat. Here he wrote most of the Faery Queen, and received the visits of Raleigh, whom he fancifully styled 'the Shepherd of the Ocean;' and here he brought home his wife, the 'Elizabeth' of his sonnets, welcoming her with that noble strain of pure and fervent passion which he has styled the Epithalamium, and which forms the most magnificent'spousal verse' in the language. Kilcolman Castle is now a ruin-its towers almost level with the ground; but the spot must ever be dear to the lovers of genius. Raleigh's visit was made in 1589, and according to the figurative language of Spenser, the two illustrious friends, while reading the manuscript of the Faery Queen, sat

Amongst the coolly shade

Of the green alders, by the Mulla's shore.

characters and events. The queen Gloriana and the huntress Belphobe are both symbolical of Queen Elizabeth; the adventures of the Redcross Knight shadow forth the history of the Church of England; the distressed knight is Henri IV.; and Envy is intended to glance at the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots. The stanza of Spenser is the Italian ottava rima, now familiar in English poetry; but he added an Alexandrine, or long line, which gives a full and sweeping close to the verse. The poet's diction is rich and abundant. He introduced, however, a number of obsolete expressions, 'new grafts of old and withered words,' for which he was censured by his contemporaries and their successors, and in which he was certainly not copied by Shakspeare. His 'Gothic subject and story' had probably, as Campbell conjectures, 'made him lean towards words of the olden time,' and his antiquated expression, as the same critic finely remarks, 'is beautiful in its antiquity, and, like the moss and ivy on some majestic building, covers the fabric of his language with romantic and venerable associations.' The Faery Queen was enthusiastically received. could scarcely, indeed, be otherwise, considering how well it was adapted to the court and times of the Virgin Queen, where gallantry and chivalry were so strangely mingled with the religious gravity and earnestness induced by the Reformation, and considering the intrinsic beauty and excellence of the poem. The first few stanzas, descriptive of Una, were of themselves sufficient to place Spenser above the whole hundred poets that then offered incense to Elizabeth.

It

We may conceive the transports of delight with which Raleigh perused or listened to those strains of chivalry and gorgeous description, which revealed to him a land still brighter than any he had seen in his distant wanderings, or could have been present even to his romantic imagination! The guest warmly approved of his friend's poem ; The queen settled a pension of £50 per annum and he persuaded Spenser, when he had comon Spenser, and he returned to Ireland. His pleted the first three books, to accompany him to smaller poems were next published: The Tears England, and arrange for their publication. The of the Muses, Mother Hubbard, &c. in 1591; Faery Queen appeared in January 1589-90, dedi- Daphnaida, 1592; and Amoretti and the Epithacated to her majesty, in that strain of adulation lamium (relating his courtship and marriage) in which was then the fashion of the age. To the 1595. His Elegy of Astrophel, on the death of volume was appended a letter to Raleigh, explain- the lamented Sidney, appeared about this time. ing the nature of the work, which the author said In 1596, Spenser was again in London to publish was 'a continued allegory, or dark conceit.' He the fourth, fifth, and sixth books of the Faery states his object to be to fashion a gentleman, or Queen. These contain the legend of Cambel and noble person, in virtuous and gentle discipline, Triamond, or Friendship; Artegal, or Justice; and that he had chosen Prince Arthur for his and Sir Caledore, or Courtesy. The double allehero. He conceives that prince to have beheld gory is continued in these cantos as in the prethe Faery Queen in a dream, and been so enam-vious ones: Artegal is the poet's friend and patron, oured of the vision, that, on awaking, he resolved Lord Grey; and various historical events are to set forth and seek her in Faery Land. The related in the knight's adventures. Half of the poet further 'devises' that the Faery Queen shall original design was thus finished; six of the keep her annual feast twelve days, twelve several adventures happening in that time, and each of not unlike Ovid's description of the creation of man; the soul just them being undertaken by a knight. The adven- severed from the sky, retains part of its heavenly power: And frames her house, in which she will be placed, tures were also to express the same number of Fit for herself, moral virtues. The first is that of the Redcross Knight, expressing Holiness; the second, Sir But he speculates further: Guyon, or Temperance; and the third, Britomartis, 'a lady knight,' representing Chastity. was thus a blending of chivalry and religion in the design of the Faery Queen. Spenser had imbibed -probably from Sidney-a portion of the Platonic doctrine, which afterwards overflowed in Milton's Comus, and he looked on chivalry as a sage and serious thing. Besides his personification of the abstract virtues, the poet made his allegorical personages and their adventures represent historical

There

The Platonism of Spenser is more clearly seen in his hymns on Love and Beauty, which are among the most passionate and exquisite of his productions. His account of the spirit of love is

So every spirit, as it is most pure,
And hath in it the more of heavenly light,
So it the fairer body doth procure
To habit in, and it more fairly dight
With cheerful grace and amiable sight;
For of the soul the body form doth take;

For soul is form, and doth the body make.

Spenser afterwards wrote two religious hymns, to counteract the effect of those on love and beauty, but though he spiritualises his passion, he does not abandon his early belief, that the fairest body incloses the fairest mind. He still says:

For all that's good is beautiful and fair. The Grecian philosophy was curiously united with puritanism in both Spenser and Milton. Our poet took the fable of his great poem from the style of the Gothic romance, but the deep sense of beauty which pervades it is of classical origin, elevated and purified by strong religious feeling. 79

twelve adventures and moral virtues were produced; but unfortunately the world saw only some fragments more of the work. It has been said that the remaining half was lost through the 'disorder and abuse' of a servant sent forward with it to England. This is highly improbable. Spenser, who came to London himself with each of the former portions, would not have ventured the largest part with a careless servant. But he had not time to complete his poetical and moral gallery. There was an interval of six years between his two publications, and he lived only three years after the second. During that period, too, Ireland was convulsed with rebellion. The English set-together trees and plants, and assemble sounds tlers, or 'undertakers,' of the crown-lands were unpopular with the conquered natives of Ireland. They were often harsh and oppressive; and even Spenser is accused, on the authority of existing legal documents, of having sought unjustly to add to his possessions. He was also in office over the Irish (clerk of the council of Munster); he had been recommended by the queen (1598) for the office of sheriff of Cork; and he was a strenuous advocate for arbitrary power, as is proved by a political treatise on the state of Ireland, written by him in 1596 for the government of Elizabeth, but not printed till the reign of Charles I. The poet was, therefore, a conspicuous object for the fury of the irritated and barbarous natives, with whom 'revenge was virtue.' The storm soon burst forth. In October 1598, an insurrection was organised in Munster, following Tyrone's rebellion, which had raged for some years in the province of Ulster. The insurgents attacked Kilcolman, and having robbed and plundered, set fire to the castle. Spenser and his wife escaped; but either in the confusion incidental to such a calamity, or from inability to render assistance, an infant child of the poet (new-born,' according to Ben Jonson) was left behind, and perished in the flames. The poet, impoverished and broken-hearted, reached London, and died in about three months, in King Street, Westminster, on Saturday the 13th January 1599. He was buried near the tomb of Chaucer in Westminster Abbey, the Earl of Essex defraying the expense of the funeral, and his hearse attended-as Camden relates-by his brotherpoets, who threw 'mournful elegies' into his grave. A monument was erected over his remains, thirty years afterwards, by Anne, Countess of Dorset. His widow, the fair Elizabeth, whose bridal bower at Kilcolman he had decked with such 'gay garlands' of song, returned to Ireland, and married a second time. The poet left two sons, Sylvanus and Peregrine. A son of the latter, Hugolin Spenser, was restored to the Irish estate by Charles II.; he afterwards lost it by adhering to the cause of James II.; but, through the interest of Halifax, it was, about the year 1700, restored to another descendant, William Spenser.

the texture of some of its most delicious embellishments) still leave him the merit of his great moral design-the conception of his allegorical characters-his exuberance of language and illustration-and that original structure of verse, powerful and harmonious, which he was the first to adopt, and which must ever bear his name. His faults arose out of the fulness of his riches. His inexhaustible powers of circumstantial description betrayed him into a tedious minuteness, which sometimes, in the delineation of his personified passions, becomes repulsive, and in the painting of natural objects led him to group and instruments, which were never seen or heard in unison out of Faery Land. The ingenuity and subtlety of his intellect tempted him to sow dark meanings and obscure allusions across the bright and obvious path of his allegory. This peculiarity of his genius was early displayed in his Shepherd's Calendar; and if Burleigh's displeasure could have cured the poet of the habit, the statesman might be half forgiven his illiberality. His command of musical language led him to protract his narrative to too great a length, till the attention becomes exhausted, even with its very melody, and indifference succeeds to languor. Had Spenser lived to finish his poem, it is doubtful whether he would not have diminished the number of his readers. His own fancy had evidently begun to give way, for the last three books have not the same rich unity of design, or plenitude of imagination, which fills the earlier cantos with so many interesting, lofty, and ethereal conceptions, and steeps them in such a flood of ideal and poetical beauty. The first two books (of Holiness and Temperance) are like the first two of Paradise Lost, works of consummate taste and genius, and superior to all the others. We agree with Mr Hazlitt, that the allegory of Spenser is in reality no bar to the enjoyment of the poem. The reader may safely disregard the symbolical applications. We may allow the poet, like his own Archimago, to divide his characters into 'double parts,' while one only is visible at a time. While we see Una, with her heavenly looks, that

Spenser is the most luxuriant and melodious of all our descriptive poets. His creation of scenes and objects is infinite, and in free and sonorous versification he has not yet been surpassed. His 'lofty rhyme' has a swell and cadence, and a continuous sweetness, that we can find nowhere else. In richness of fancy and invention, he can scarcely be ranked below Shakspeare, and he is fully as original. His obligations to the Italian poets (Ariosto supplying a wild Gothic and chivalrous model for the Faery Queen, and Tasso furnishing

80

Made a sunshine in the shady place,

or Belphoebe flying through the woods, or Britomartis seated amidst the young warriors, we need not stop to recollect that the first is designed to represent the true church, the second Queen Elizabeth, or the third an abstract personification of Chastity. They are exquisite representations of female loveliness and truth, unmatched save in the dramas of Shakspeare. The allegory of Spenser leaves his wild enchantments, his picturesque situations, his shady groves and lofty trees

any star

Not pierceable by power of his Masque of Cupid, and Bower of Bliss, and all the witcheries of his gardens and wildernesses, without the slightest ambiguity or indistinctness. There is no haze over his finest pictures. We seem to walk in the green alleys of his broad forests, to hear the stream tinkle and the fountain fall, to enter his caves of Mammon and Despair, to gaze on his knights and ladies, or to join in his fierce combats and crowded allegorical processions. There is no perplexity, no intercepted

lights, in those fine images and personifications. They may be sometimes fantastic, but they are always brilliant and distinct. When Spenser fails to interest, it is when our coarser taste becomes palled with his sweetness, and when we feel that his scenes want the support of common probability and human passions. We surrender ourselves up for a time to the power of the enchanter, and witness with wonder and delight his marvellous achievements; but we wish to return again to the world, and to mingle with our fellow-mortals in its busy and passionate pursuits. It is here that Shakspeare eclipses Spenser; here that he builds upon his beautiful groundwork of fancy-the high and durable structure of conscious dramatic truth and living reality. Spenser's mind was as purely poetical, and embraced a vast range of imaginary creation. The interest of real life alone is wanting. Spenser's is an ideal world, remote and abstract, yet affording, in its multiplied scenes, scope for those nobler feelings and heroic virtues which we love to see even in transient connection with human nature. The romantic character of his poetry is its most essential and permanent feature. We may tire of his allegory and 'dark conceit,' but the general impression remains; we never think of the Faery Queen without recalling its wondrous scenes of enchantment and beauty, and feeling ourselves lulled, as it were, by the recollected music of the poet's verse, and the endless flow and profusion of his fancy.

Una and the Redcross Knight.

A gentle knight was pricking on the plain,
Yclad in mighty arms and silver shield,
Wherein old dints of deep wounds did remain,
The cruel marks of many a bloody field;
Yet arms till that time did he never wield:
His angry steed did chide his foaming bit,
As much disdaining to the curb to yield :
Full jolly knight he seemed, and fair did sit,
As one for knightly jousts and fierce encounters fit.

And on his breast a bloody cross he bore,
The dear remembrance of his dying Lord,
For whose sweet sake that glorious badge he wore,
And dead-as living ever-him adored :
Upon his shield the like was also scored,
For sovereign hope, which in his help he had :
Right faithful true he was in deed and word;
But of his cheer did seem too solemn sad :
Yet nothing did he dread, but ever was ydrad.

Upon a great adventure he was bound,
That greatest Gloriana to him gave-
That greatest glorious queen of Faery lond-
To win him worship, and her grace to have,
Which of all earthly things he most did crave;
And ever as he rode, his heart did yearn
To prove his puissance in battle brave
Upon his foe, and his new force to learn ;
Upon his foe, a dragon horrible and stern.

A lovely lady rode him fair beside,
Upon a lowly ass more white than snow;
Yet she much whiter, but the same did hide
Under a veil that wimpled was full low,
And over all a black stole she did throw,
As one that inly mourned: so was she sad,
And heavy sate upon her palfrey slow;
Seemed in heart some hidden care she had,

And by her in a line a milk-white lamb she led.

So pure and innocent, as that same lamb,
She was in life and every virtuous lore,
And by descent from royal lineage came
Of ancient kings and queens, that had of yore
Their sceptres stretcht from east to western shore,
And all the world in their subjection held;
Till that infernal fiend with foul uproar
Forewasted all their land and them expelled:
Whom to avenge, she had this knight from far
compelled.

Behind her far away a dwarf did lag,
That lazy seemed in being ever last,
Or wearied with bearing of her bag

Of needments at his back. Thus as they past
The day with clouds was sudden overcast,
And angry Jove an hideous storm of rain
Did pour into his leman's lap so fast,

That every wight to shroud it did constrain,
And this fair couple eke to shroud themselves were fain.
Enforced to seek some covert nigh at hand,
A shady grove not far away they spied,
That promised aid the tempest to withstand ;
Whose lofty trees, yclad with summer's pride,
Did spread so broad, that heaven's light did hide,
Nor pierceable with power of any star :
And all within were paths and alleys wide,
With footing worn, and leading inward far:
Fair harbour, that them seems; so in they entered are.

And forth they pass, with pleasure forward led,
Joying to hear the birds' sweet harmony,
Which therein shrouded from the tempest dread,
Seemed in their song to scorn the cruel sky.

Much can they praise the trees so straight and high,
The sailing pine, the cedar proud and tall,
The vine-prop elm, the poplar never dry,
The builder oak, sole king of forests all,

The aspin good for staves, the cypress funeral.

The laurel, meed of mighty conquerors
And poets sage, the fir that weepeth still,
The willow, worn of forlorn paramours,
The yew obedient to the bender's will,
The birch for shafts, the sallow for the mill,
The myrrh sweet bleeding in the bitter wound,
The warlike beech, the ash for nothing ill,
The fruitful olive, and the plantain round,
The carver holme, the maple seldom inward sound:

Led with delight, they thus beguile the way,
Until the blustering storm is overblown,
When, weening to return, whence they did stray,
They cannot find that path which first was shewn,
But wander to and fro in ways unknown,
Furthest from end then, when they nearest ween,
That makes them doubt their wits be not their own:
So many paths, so many turnings seen,

That which of them to take, in divers doubt they been.

Adventure of Una with the Lion.

Nought is there under heaven's wide hollowness,
That moves more dear compassion of mind,
Than beauty brought to unworthy wretchedness
Through envy's snares or fortune's freaks unkind.
I, whether lately through her brightness blind,
Or through allegiance and fast fealty,
Which I do owe unto all womankind,
Feel my heart pressed with so great agony,
When such I see, that all for pity I could die. . . .

Yet she, most faithful lady, all this while
Forsaken, woful, solitary maid,

Far from all people's press, as in exile,
In wilderness and wasteful deserts strayed,

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To seek her knight; who, subtily betrayed
Through that late vision which th' enchanter wrought,
Had her abandoned; she of nought afraid

Through woods and wasteness wide him daily sought;
Yet wished tidings none of him unto her brought.

One day, nigh weary of the irksome way,
From her unhasty beast she did alight;
And on the grass her dainty limbs did lay,
In secret shadow, far from all men's sight;
From her fair head her fillet she undight,
And laid her stole aside: her angel's face,
As the great eye of heaven, shined bright,
And made a sunshine in the shady place;

Did never mortal eye behold such heavenly grace.

It fortuned, out of the thickest wood
A ramping lion rushed suddenly,
Hunting full greedy after savage blood:
Soon as the royal virgin he did spy,
With gaping mouth at her ran greedily,
To have at once devoured her tender corse:
But to the prey when as he drew more nigh,
His bloody rage assuaged with remorse,

And with the sight amazed forgat his furious force.

Instead thereof he kissed her weary feet,
And licked her lily hands with fawning tongue;
As he her wronged innocence did weet.
O how can beauty master the most strong,
And simple truth subdue avenging wrong!
Whose yielded pride and proud submission,
Still dreading death, when she had marked long,
Her heart gan melt in great compassion,
And drizzling tears did shed for pure affection.

'The lion, lord of every beast in field,'
Quoth she, his princely puissance doth abate,
And mighty proud to humble weak does yield,
Forgetful of the hungry rage, which late
Him pricked, in pity of my sad estate:
But he, my lion, and my noble lord,
How does he find in cruel heart to hate
Her that him loved, and ever most adored,

As the God of my life? why hath he me abhorred!'

Redounding tears did choke th' end of her plaint,
Which softly echoed from the neighbour wood;
And, sad to see her sorrowful constraint,
The kingly beast upon her gazing stood:
With pity calmed down fell his angry mood.
At last, in close heart shutting up her pain,
Arose the virgin born of heavenly brood,
And to her snowy palfrey got again,

To seek her strayed champion if she might attain.

The lion would not leave her desolate,
But with her went along, as a strong guard
Of her chaste
and a faithful mate
person,
Of her sad troubles and misfortunes hard:
Still when she slept, he kept both watch and ward;
And when she waked, he waited diligent,
With humble service to her will prepared;
From her fair eyes he took commandément,
And ever by her looks conceived her intent.

The Bower of Bliss.

There the most dainty paradise on ground
Itself doth offer to his sober eye,
In which all pleasures plenteously abound,
And none does others' happiness envy;
The painted flowers, the trees upshooting high,
The dales for shade, the hills for breathing space,
The trembling groves, the crystal running by;
And that which all fair works doth most aggrace,
The art which all that wrought, appeared in no place.

One would have thought-so cunningly the rude
And scorned parts were mingled with the fine-
That nature had for wantonness ensued
Art, and that art at nature did repine;
So striving each th' other to undermine,
Each did the other's work more beautify;
So differing both in wills, agreed in fine:
So all agreed through sweet diversity,
This garden to adorn with all variety.

And in the midst of all a fountain stood
Of richest substance that on earth might be,
So pure and shiny, that the silver flood
Through every channel running one might see;
Most goodly it with curious imagery

Was overwrought, and shapes of naked boys,
Of which some seemed with lively jollity

To fly about, playing their wanton toys,

While others did embay themselves in liquid joys.

And over all, of purest gold, was spread

A trail of ivy in his native hue:
For the rich metal was so coloured,

That wight, who did not well advised it view,
Would surely deem it to be ivy true:

Low his lascivious arms adown did creep,

That themselves dipping in the silver dew,
Their fleecy flowers they fearfully did steep,

Which drops of crystal seemed for wantonness to weep.

Infinite streams continually did well

Out of this fountain, sweet and fair to see,
The which into an ample laver fell,
And shortly grew to so great quantity,
That like a little lake it seemed to be;
Whose depth exceeded not three cubits height,

That through the waves one might the bottom see,
All paved beneath with jasper shining bright,
That seemed the fountain in that sea did sail upright.

• ...

And all the margin round about was set
With shady laurel trees, thence to defend
The sunny beams, which on the billows beat,
And those which therein bathed might offend.
Eftsoons they heard a most melodious sound,
Of all that might delight a dainty ear,
Such as at once might not on living ground,
Save in this paradise, be heard elsewhere:
Right hard it was for wight which did it hear,
To read what manner music that might be:
For all that pleasing is to living ear,
Was there consorted in one harmony;
Birds, voices, instruments, winds, waters, all agree.

The joyous birds, shrouded in cheerful shade,
Their notes unto the voice attempered sweet;
Th' angelical soft trembling voices made
To th' instruments divine respondence meet;
The silver sounding instruments did meet
With the base murmur of the water's fall:
The water's fall with difference discreet,
Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call:
The gentle warbling wind low answered to all.

The while, some one did chant this lovely lay:
'Ah see, whoso fair thing dost fain to see,
In springing flower the image of thy day!
Ah see the virgin rose, how sweetly she
Doth first peep forth with bashful modesty,
That fairer seems, the less ye see her may!
Lo, see soon after, how more bold and free
Her bared bosom she doth broad display;
Lo, see soon after, how she fades and falls away!

'So passeth, in the passing of a day,
Of mortal life, the leaf, the bud, the flower,
Nor more doth flourish after first decay,
That erst was sought to deck both bed and bower

Of many a lady, and many a paramour;
Gather therefore the rose, while yet is prime,
For soon comes age, that will her pride deflower:
Gather the rose of love, while yet is time,

While loving thou mayst loved be with equal crime.'

In the foregoing extracts from the Faery Queen, we have, for the sake of perspicuity, modernised the spelling, without changing a word of the original. The following two highly poetical descriptions are given in the poet's orthography:

The House of Sleep.

He making speedy way through spersed ayre,
And through the world of waters wide and deepe,
To Morpheus' house doth hastily repaire.
Amid the bowels of the earth full steepe,
And low, where dawning day doth never peepe,
His dwelling is, there Tethys his wet bed
Doth ever wash, and Cynthia still doth steepe,
In silver deaw, his ever drouping hed,

Whiles sad Night over him her mantle black doth spred.

Whose double gates he findeth locked fast,
The one fayre fram'd of burnisht yvory,
The other all with silver overcast;

And wakeful dogges before them farre doe lye,
Watching to banish Care their enimy,
Who oft is wont to trouble gentle sleepe.
By them the sprite doth passe in quietly,
And unto Morpheus comes, whom drowned deepe
In drowsie fit he findes; of nothing he takes keepe.

And more to lulle him in his slumber soft,

A trickling streame from high rock tumbling downe,
And ever-drizling raine upon the loft,

Mixt with a murmuring winde, much like the sowne
Of swarming bees, did cast him in a swowne.
No other noyse, nor peoples troublous cryes,
As still are wont t' annoy the walled towne,
Might there be heard; but careless Quiet lyes
Wrapt in eternal silence farre from enimyes.

Description of Belphabe.

In her faire eyes two living lamps did flame,
Kindled above at th' heavenly Maker's light,
And darted fyrie beames out of the same,
So passing persant, and so wondrous bright,
That quite bereaved the rash beholders sight:
In them the blinded god his lustfull fyre
To kindle oft assayd, but had no might;
For, with dredd majestie and awfull yre,

She broke his wanton darts, and quenched base desyre.

Her yvorie forhead, full of bountie brave,
Like a broad table did itselfe dispred,
For Love his loftie triumphes to engrave,
And write the battailes of his great godhed:
All good and honour might therein be red;

For there their dwelling was. And, when she spake,
Sweete wordes, like dropping honey, she did shed;
And 'twixt the perles and rubins softly brake

A silver sound, that heavenly musicke seemd to make.

Upon her eyelids many graces sate,
Under the shadow of her even browes,
Working belgardes and amorous retrate;
And everie one her with a grace endowes,
And everie one with meekenesse to her bowes:
So glorious mirrhour of celestiall grace,
And soveraine moniment of mortall vowes,
How shall frayle pen descrive her heavenly face,
For feare, through want of skill, her beauty to disgrace!

So faire, and thousand thousand times more faire,
She seemd, when she presented was to sight;
And was yclad, for heat of scorching aire,
All in a silken Camus lily white,

Purfled upon with many a folded plight,
Which all above besprinckled was throughout
With golden aygulets. . .

And in her hand a sharpe bore-speare she held,
And at her backe a bow, and quiver gay
Stuft with steel-headed dartes, wherewith she queld
The salvage beastes in her victorious play,
Knit with a golden bauldricke which forelay
Athwart her snowy brest, and did divide
Her daintie paps; which, like young fruit in May,
Now little gan to swell, and being tide
Through her thin weed their places only signifide.

Her yellow lockes, crisped like golden wyre,
About her shoulders weren loosely shed,
And, when the winde emongst them did inspyre,
They waved like a penon wyde despred,
And low behinde her backe were scattered:
And, whether art it were or heedlesse hap,
As through the flouring forrest rash she fled,

In her rude heares sweet flowres themselves did lap,
And flourishing fresh leaves and blossomes did enwrap.

Fable of the Oak and the Brier.

There grew an aged tree on the green,
A goodly Oak sometime had it been,
With arms full strong and largely displayed,
But of their leaves they were disarrayed;
The body big and mightily pight,
Throughly rooted, and of wondrous height;
Whilom had been the king of the field,
And mochel mast to the husband did yield,
And with his nuts larded many swine,
But now the gray moss marred his rine,
His bared boughs were beaten with storms,
His top was bald, and wasted with worms,
His honour decayed, his branches sere.

Hard by his side grew a bragging Briere,
Which proudly thrust into th' element,
And seemed to threat the firmament:
It was embellisht with blossoms fair,
And thereto aye wonted to repair
The shepherd's daughters to gather flowres,
To paint their garlands with his colowres,
And in his small bushes used to shroud,
The sweet nightingale singing so loud,
Which made this foolish Briere wex so bold,
That on a time he cast him to scold,

And sneb the good Oak, for he was old.

'Why stands there,' quoth he, 'thou brutish

block?

Nor for fruit nor for shadow serves thy stock;
Seest how fresh my flowres been spread,

Dyed in lily white and crimson red,
With leaves engrained in lusty green,
Colours meet to cloath a maiden queen?
Thy waste bigness but cumbers the ground,
And dirks the beauty of my blossoms round:
The mouldy moss, which thee accloyeth:
My cinnamon smell too much annoyeth:
Wherefore soon I rede thee hence remove,
Lest thou the price of my displeasure prove.'
So spake this bold Briere with great disdain,
Little him answered the Oak again,
But yielded, with shame and grief adawed,
That of a weed he was over-crawed.

It chanced after upon a day,
The husbandman's self to come that way,
Of custom to surview his ground,
And his trees of state in compass round:

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