To the gay gardens his unstaid desire Him wholly carried, to refresh his sprights; There lavish Nature, in her last attire, Pours forth sweet odors and alluring sights; And Art, with her contending, doth aspire To excel the natural with made delights, And all that fair or pleasant may be found, In riotous excess doth there abound. There he arriving, round about doth flie, From bed to bed, from one to the other border, And takes survey with curious busy eye, Of every flower and herb there set in order; Now this, now that, he tasteth tenderly, Yet none of them he rudely doth disorder; He with his feet their silken leaves displace, But pastures on the pleasures of each place. And evermore with most variety And change of sweetness (for all change is sweet), He casts his glutton sense to satisfy, Now sucking of the sap of herbs most meet, Or of the dew which yet on them doth lie, Now in the same bathing his tender feet; And then he percheth on some branch thereby To weather him, and his moist wings to dry. And whatsoe’er of virtue good or ill, Grew in his garden fetched from far away, Of every one he takes and tastes at will, And on their pleasures greedily doth prey; Then, when he hath both played and fed his fill, In the warm sun he doth himself embay, And there him rests in riotous suffisance Of all his gladfulness and kingly joyance. What more felicity can fall a creature Than to enjoy delight with liberty? And to be lord of all the works of Nature, To reign in the air from earth to highest sky? To feed on flowers and weeds of glorious feature, To take whatever thing doth please the eye? Who rests not pleased with such happiness Well worthy he to taste of wretchedness. What poet has ever left us such a portrait of himself as this? In that butterfly Spenser has symbolized the purely poetical nature. It will be seen that there is no recognition of the moral sense whatever. The poetic nature considered abstractly craves only beauty and delight--without any thought beyond-- And whatsoe’er _of virtue good or ill_, To feed on flowers and _weeds of glorious feature_. The poetical temperament has nowhere been at once so exquisitely defined and illustrated. Among poets, Spenser stands for the temperament personified. But how did it happen that this lightsome creature, whose only business was To reign in the air from earth to highest sky,