Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book ISpenser, Edmund
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Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I
Spenser, Edmund
English poetry -- Early modern, 1500-1700; Knights and knighthood -- Poetry; Virtues -- Poetry
The next year while still in London, Spenser collected his early poems and
issued them under the title of _Complaints_. In this volume were the _Ruins
of Time_ and the _Tears of the Muses_, two poems on the indifference shown
to literature before 1580, and the remarkable _Mother Hubberds Tale_, a
bitter satire on the army, the court, the church, and politics. His
_Daphnaida_ was also published about the same time. On his return to
Ireland he gave a charming picture of life at Kilcolman Castle, with an
account of his visit to the court, in _Colin Clout's Come Home Again_. The
story of the long and desperate courtship of his second love, Elizabeth,
whom he wedded in 1594, is told in the _Amoretti_, a sonnet sequence full
of passion and tenderness. His rapturous wedding ode, the _Epithalamion_,
which is, by general consent, the most glorious bridal song in our
language, and the most perfect of all his poems in its freshness, purity,
and passion, was also published in 1595. The next year Spenser was back in
London and published the _Prothalamion_, a lovely ode on the marriage of
Lord Worcester's daughters, and his four _Hymns_ on Love and Beauty,
Heavenly Love, and Heavenly Beauty. The first two _Hymns_ are early poems,
and the two latter maturer work embodying Petrarch's philosophy, which
teaches that earthly love is a ladder that leads men to the love of God. In
this year, 1596, also appeared the last three books of the _Faerie Queene_,
containing the Legends of Friendship, Justice, and Courtesy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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