"I bear round berries, gray and red, Rootless and rover though I be; My spangled leaves, when nicely spread, Arboresce as a trunkless tree; Corals curious coat me o'er White and hard in apt array; Mid the wild waves' rude uproar Gracefully grow I, night and day. "Hearts there are on the sounding shore, (Something whispers soft to me,) Restless and roaming for evermore, Like this weary weed of the sea; Bear they yet on each beating breast The eternal Type of the wondrous whole, Growth unfolding amidst unrest, Grace informing the silent soul." All nature becomes alive in the Spenserian description. Take, for example, the wonderful stanza which describes the music of the "Bower of Bliss:"-- "The joyous birds, shrouded in cheerful shade Their notes unto the voice attemper'd sweet; Th' angelical, soft, trembling voices made To the instruments divine respondence meet; The silver-sounding instruments did meet With the bass murmur of the water's fall; The water's fall, with difference discreet, Now loud, now low, unto the winds did call; The gentle warbling winds low answerëd to all." Consider the splendid portrait of Belphœbe:-- "In her fair eyes two living lamps did flame, Kindled above at the Heavenly Maker's light; And darted fiery beams out of the same, So passing piercing, and so wondrous bright, They quite bereaved the rash beholder's sight; In them the blinded god his lustful fire To kindle oft essay'd but had no might, For with dread majesty and awful ire She broke his wanton darts and quenchëd base desire. "Her ivory forehead, full of bounty brave, Like a broad tablet did itself dispread, For love his lofty triumphs to engrave, And write the battles of his great godhead; All good and honor might therein be read, For there their dwelling was; and when she spake, Sweet words, like dropping honey she did shed; And, twixt the pearls and rubies softly brake A silver Sound, that heavenly music seemed to make." If we examine this picture, we see that it is not a photograph, such as the sun makes, but a lover's description of his mistress. He sees her, not as she is, but as she is to _him_. He paints her out of his own heart. In her eyes he sees, not only brilliancy and color, but heavenly light; he reads in them an untouched purity of soul. Looking at her forehead, he sees, not whiteness and roundness, but goodness and honor. Shakespeare's lovers always describe their mistresses in this way, out of their own soul and heart. It is his own feeling that the lover gives, seeing perhaps "Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt." After Chaucer and Spenser the next great English poets whose names naturally occur to us are Shakespeare and Milton.