A silver trumpet Spenser blows,
And, as its martial notes to silence flee,
From a virgin chorus flows
A hymn in praise of spotless Chastity.
’Tis still! Wild warblings from the Æolian lyre
Enchantment softly breathe, and tremblingly expire.
JOHN KEATS: ‘Ode to Apollo’ (1815)
Spenser was educated at Merchant Taylors’ School and Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, where he was a ‘sizar’, a student who undertook menial tasks in return for free ‘sizes’ or rations. He obtained a place in the Earl of Leicester’s household, where he met Sir Philip Sidney, to whom he dedicated his Shepheardes Calender (1579), and with whom he founded a literary club, the Areopagus, one of the purposes of which was to naturalize classical metres in English verse. Having been appointed secretary to Lord Grey de Wilton, he went to Ireland and settled in Munster, where he acquired Kilcolman Castle in County Cork as a reward for crushing a rebellion. It was here that he lived and wrote his elegy Astrophell on the death of Sir Philip Sidney, and prepared The Faerie Queene, begun in 1579, for press. He visited London in 1589 to give three books of The Faerie Queene to the printer, and was introduced by Sir Walter Ralegh to Queen Elizabeth, who awarded him a pension of fifty pounds, despite his previously published attack on her match with the Duc d’Alençon. There was, however, to be no preferment, and he returned to his Irish ‘exile’.
It was there in 1591 that he wrote Colin Clovt’s Come Home Againe, dedicated to Sir Walter Ralegh: ‘The which I humbly beseech you to accept in part of paiment of the infinite debt in which I acknowledge my selfe bounden unto you, for your singular fauours and sundrie good turnes shewed to me at my late being in England’. This charming and, at times, satirical allegory describes how Ralegh travelled to Ireland to persuade Spenser to come to England ‘his Cynthia to see’ – in other words Queen Elizabeth. Ralegh appears as the Shepheard of the Ocean, and the court comes in for a deal of criticism. The work was published in 1595 and contains lines that Wilhelm Müller – a celebrated translator who rendered Marlowe’s Dr Faustus into memorable German – echoes in ‘Ungeduld’ from Die schöne Müllerin:
Her name in euery tree I will endosse,
That as the trees do grow, her name may grow:
And in the ground each where will it engrosse,
And fill with stones, that all men may it know.
The speaking woods and murmuring waters fall,
Her name Ile teach in knowen termes to frame:
And eke my lambs when for their dams they call,
Ile teach to call for Cynthia by name.
In 1594, Spenser married Elizabeth Boyle, some twenty years his junior. A year later, he published his Amoretti and Epithalamion, which celebrate the couple’s courtship and marriage. Whereas Petrarch’s sonnets deal with the poet’s longing for an unattainable mistress, and spiritual torment, Spenser’s are predominantly ‘happy leaues’ (Sonnet I) which, despite some frustration and doubt, chart the development of a relationship which ends in fulfilment, as the lover-poet is finally granted his beloved. One year after his Epithalamion, Spenser published the second part of The Faerie Queene – but only six of the planned twelve books were eventually printed. The resultant prosperity was short-lived. Kilcolman Castle was burnt in 1598 during an insurrection by the Irish, his youngest child died in the attack and Spenser fled to Cork with his family. The rest of his life was spent in penury; he died at lodgings in King Street, Westminster, and was buried near his beloved Chaucer in Westminster Abbey, apostrophized in a celebrated line from Prothalamion: ‘Sweete Themmes runne softly, till I end my Song.’ John Aubrey, quoting a Mr Beeston, tells us that Spenser was ‘a little man, wore short haire, little band and little cuffs’.
Spenser gave his name to the Spenserian stanza, a verse pattern of nine lines, made up of eight iambic lines of ten syllables and one of twelve, with the rhyming scheme ababbcbcc. Several English poets paid him the compliment of writing works in Spenserian stanzas: Byron (Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage), Keats (‘The Eve of St Agnes’) and Shelley (‘Adonais’).
[…]
Faire is the heauen, where happy soules haue place,
In full enioyment of felicitie,
Whence they doe still behold the glorious face
Of the diuine eternall Maiestie;
[…]
Yet farre more faire be those bright Cherubins,
Which all with golden wings are ouerdight,
And those eternall burning Seraphins,
Which from their faces dart out fierie light;
Yet fairer then they both, and much more bright
Be th’Angels and Archangels, which attend
On Gods owne person, without rest or end.
These thus in faire each other farre excelling,
As to the Highest they approch more neare,
Yet is that Highest farre beyond all telling,
Fairer then all the rest which there appeare,
Though all their beauties ioynd together were:
How then can mortall tongue hope to expresse,
The image of such endlesse perfectnesse?
[…]
Be nought dismayd that her vnmoued mind
doth still persist in her rebellious pride:
such loue not lyke to lusts of baser kynd,
the harder wonne, the firmer will abide.
The durefull1 Oake, whose sap is not yet dride,
is long ere it conceiue the kindling2 fyre:
but when it once doth burne, it doth diuide3
great heat, and makes his flames to heauen aspire4.
So hard it is to kindle new desire
in gentle brest that shall endure for euer:
deepe is the wound, that dints5 the parts entire6
with chast affects7, that naught but death can seuer.
Then thinke not long in taking litle paine
to knit the knot8, that euer shall remaine.
Lackyng my loue I go from place to place,
lyke a young fawne that late hath lost the hynd:
and seeke each where, where last I sawe her face,
whose ymage yet I carry fresh in mynd.
I seeke the fields with her late footing synd,
i seeke her bowre with her late presence deckt,
yet nor in field nor bowre I her can fynd:
yet field and bowre are full of her aspect2.
But when myne eyes I thereunto direct,
they ydly back returne to me agayne,
and when I hope to see theyr trew obiect,
i fynd my selfe but fed with fancies vayne.
Cease then myne eyes, to seeke her selfe to see,
and let my thoughts behold her selfe in mee.
The merry Cuckow1, messenger of Spring,
His trompet shrill hath thrise already sounded:
That warnes al louers wayt vpon their king2,
Who now is comming forth with girland crouned.
With noyse whereof the quyre of Byrds resounded
Their anthemes3 sweet devized of loues prayse;
That all the woods theyr ecchoes back rebounded,
As if they knew the meaning of their layes.
But mongst them all, which did Loues honor rayse,
No word was heard of her that most it ought4:
But she his precept5 proudly disobayes,
And doth his ydle6 message set at nought.
Therefore O loue, vnlesse she turne to thee
Ere Cuckow end, let her a rebell be.