That here in sorrow art foresunk so deep,

That at thy sight I can but sigh and weep.'

For forth she paced in her fearful tale:

'Come, come,' quoth she, 'and see what I shall show, Come, hear the plaining and the bitter bale

Of worthy men by Fortune overthrow :
Come thou and see them rueing all in row,

They were but shades that erst in mind thou roll'd:
Come, come with me, thine eyes shall them behold.'

Flat down I fell, and with all reverence
Adored her, perceiving now that she,

A goddess, sent by godly providence,

*

In earthly shape thus show'd herself to me,

To wail and rue this world's uncertainty:

And, while I honour'd thus her godhead's might, With plaining voice these words to me she shright.

'I shall thee guide first to the grisly lake,
And thence unto the blissful place of rest,

Where thou shalt see, and hear, the plaint they make
That whilom here bare swing among the best :
This shalt thou see: but great is the unrest
That thou must bide, before thou canst attain
Unto the dreadful place where these remain.'

Thence come we to the horrour and the hell,
The large great kingdoms, and the dreadful reign
Of Pluto in his throne where he did dwell,
The wide waste places, and the hugy plain,
The wailings, shrieks, and sundry sorts of pain,
The sighs, the sobs, the deep and deadly groan :
Earth, air, and all, resounding plaint and moan.
"Here pul'd the babes, and here the maids unwed
With folded hands their sorry chance bewail'd,
Here wept the guiltless slain, and lovers dead,
That slew themselves when nothing else avail'd:
A thousand sorts of sorrows here, that wail'd

With sighs, and tears, sobs, shrieks, and all yfear,
That, oh, alas, it was a hell to hear.

*

*

*

*

Lo here, quoth Sorrow, princes of renown,
That whilom-sat on top of fortune's wheel,
Now laid full low, like wretches whirled down,
Ev'n with one frown, that stay'd but with a smile:
And now behold the thing that thou, ere while,
Saw only in thought: and what thou now shalt hear,
Recount the same to kesar, king and peer.'

*

*

COMPLAINT OF THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.

So long as fortune would permit the same,
I liv'd in rule and riches with the best :
And pass'd my time in honour and in fame,
That of mishap no fear was in my breast:
But false fortune, when I suspected least,
Did turn the wheel, and with a doleful fall
Hath me bereft of honour, life, and all.

Lo, what avails in riches floods that flows?
Though she so smil'd, as all the world were his :
Even kings and kesars biden fortune's throws,

And simple sort must bear it as it is.

Take heed by me that blith'd in baleful bliss:
My rule, my riches, royal blood and all,
When fortune frown'd, the feller made my fall.

For hard mishaps, that happens unto such
Whose wretched state erst never fell no change,
Agrieve them not in any part so much
As their distress, to whom it is so strange
That all their lives, nay, passed pleasures range,
Their sudden woe, that aye wield wealth at will,
Algates their hearts more piercingly must thrill.

For of my birth, my blood was of the best, First born an earl, then duke by due descent: To swing the sway in court among the rest, Dame Fortune me her rule most largely lent, And kind with courage so my corpse had blent, That lo, on whom but me did she most smile? And whom but me, lo, did she most beguile?

Now hast thou heard the whole of my unhap,
My chance, my change, the cause of all my care:
In wealth and woe, how fortune did me wrap,
With world at will, to win me to her snare :
Bid kings, bid kesars, bid all states beware,
And tell them this from me that tried it true:
Who reckless rules, right soon may hap to rue.

SLEEP.

By him lay heavy Sleep, the cousin of Death,
Flat on the ground, and still as any stone,
A very corpse, save yielding forth a breath:
Small keep took he, whom Fortune frowned on,
Or whom she lifted up into the throne.
Of high renown but as a living death,
So, dead alive, of life he drew the breath.

The body's rest, the quiet of the heart,
The travail's ease, the still night's fear was he,
And of our life on earth the better part :

Reaver of sight, and yet in whom we see
Things oft that tide, and oft that never be:
Without respect, esteeming equally

King Croesus' pomp, and Irus' poverty.

EDMUND SPENSER.

[EDMUND SPENSER was born in London about 1552. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School: his first poetical performances, translations from Petrarch and Du Bellay, published without his name in a miscellaneous collection, belong to the time of his leaving school in 1569. From that year to 1576 he was at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. In 1579 he was in London, acquainted with Philip Sidney, and in Lord Leicester's household. In 1580 was published, but without his name, The Shepheards Calender; and in the autumn of that year he went to Ireland with Lord Grey of Wilton, as his private secretary. The remainder of his life, with the exception of short visits to England, was spent in Ireland, whem he held various subordinate offices, and where he settled on a gran forfeited land at Kilcolman in the county of Cork. In 1589 he alter the panied Sir Walter Ralegh to London, and in 1590 published the fed on in books of The Faerie Queene. In 1591 he returned to Irse a new form of laneous collection of compositions of earlier and laight-line one of the was published in London. In June 1594 he mawedly designed to him1595, he again visited London, and in Jan. 1

the

instalment of The Faerie Queene (iv-vi). W poem. It was not merely published his Colin Clouts Come Home ag adventures, like the Orlando. Court in 1589-90, and his Amoretti Sonniebration of a great historical his courtship and marriage. At the Gerusalemme. It professed to and burnt by the Munster rebels, al philosophy. It was planned, and London. He died at Westminsterunfolded, in order to pourtray and Abbey.] 1 to exhibit philosophical speculations. book, not for delight merely, but for Spenser was the first who of poetry was characteristically in harReformation made himsel spirit of the time in England, which compared with that of Cntellectual efforts, but which expected in then stood at the head more than amuse, and had fashion on its had revived under the rte of frivolity on what did not bear this a burst of poetical enthtew. Spenser thought it right to declare to poetry. Versification down in writing, the aim and intention of Court circles. The taribed it as a work which 'is in heroical verse in ballads, and among Faery Queen to represent all the moral

deal of bad poetry there was some written which was genuine and beautiful, and which has survived to charm us still. The poetical spirit and feeling came out most naturally in short love poems, of which many of great grace and fire are preserved in the collections of the time; the other form which it took at this time was the expression of the pathetic incidents and conditions of human greatness and fortune. Sir Philip Sidney, one of the most accomplished and most rising of the young men about the Court, encouraged an interest in poetry in his circle of friends, and some of them, Edward Dyer and Fulke Greville, have, like Sidney himself, left poems of merit. But while there was much poetical writing, and not a little poetical power even among men engaged in the business and wars of the time, such as Walter Ralegh, no successful attempt had been made to produce a great poetical work which might challenge comparison with the Canterbury Tales at home, or the Orlando Furioso abroad. Spenser was the first who had the ambition and also the power for such an enterprise. His arliest work, The Shepherd's Calendar, a series of what were led pastoral poems, after the fashion of the Italian models and English imitators, partly original, partly translated or para1, though very immature and very unequal in its composition, Flat to be something more considerable as a poetical A very anything which the sixteenth century had yet Small keephe 'new poet' became almost a recognised Or whom shehad shown, not merely by a few spirited Of high renown sustained work, that he could write so So, dead alive, of fame and the associations of The m even to the end of his career. The body's rest, the qun for its pastoral colouring and The travail's ease, the sive himself the rustic name by And of our life on earth tin its dialogues, and called Reaver of sight, and yet in

Things oft that tide, and ong beyond the expectations
Without respect, esteeming è its plan, its invention, and
King Croesus' pomp, and Iruy by surprise. It opened

ingdoms to be won by it.
time even before that of
1 poets. A discoverer of
at all were trying to do,
d magnificent art.
I poetry, any more than