“Who writes poetry imbibes honey from the poisoned lips of life.”~William Rose Benet

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
Vain man, said she, that doest in vain assay
A mortal thing so to immortalize,
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eek my name be wiped out likewise.
Not so (quoth I), let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name.
Where whenas Death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.

Ah! the poet will immortalize his love in poetry, and her virtues will in turn make his poetry immortal. ‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished!

Edmund Spenser’s most famous poem is probably his epic, The Faerie Queen, but does anyone really read it anymore? Even for an Elizabethan poetry class, it’s way too long, and everyone’s ready to get on to Shakespeare and Donne, right? Carrie, Reading to Know, started with Book 1 and Book 2 of The Faerie Queen, but hasn’t finished as far as I can tell. Mental Multivitamin recommends The Questing Knights of the Faerie Queen by Geraldine McCaughrean, an illustrated retelling of the poem.
C.S.Lewis: “”Beyond all doubt, it is best to have made one’s first acquaintance with Spenser in a very large — and preferably illustrated — edition of The Faerie Queen, on a wet day, between the ages of twelve and sixteen.””

Sonnet 75 is from Spenser’s Amoretti, a series of sonnets he wrote during his courtship of his second wife. He also wrote another poem called Epithalmion for his wedding to the object of his desire in the sonnets of Amoretti. Anthony Esolen contrasts Spenser’s view of marriage with contemporary “pseudogamy” in this post at Mere Comments.

Other famous Spenserian lines from sundry poems:

“I was promised on a time – to have reason for my rhyme;
From that time unto this season, I received nor rhyme nor reason.”

”Make haste therefore, sweet love, whilst it is prime,
For none can call again the passed time.”