“I feel my bosom glow with wontless fires Rais’d from the vulgar press my mind aspires, Wing’d with high thoughts, unto his praise to climb, From deep eternity who called forth time; That essence which not mov’d makes each thing move, Uncreate beauty, all creating love: But by so great an object, radiant light, My heart appall’d, enfeebled rests my sight, Thick clouds benight my labouring engine, And at my high attempts my wits repine. If thou in me this sacred rapture wrought, My knowledge sharpen, sarcels [_i.e._ pinions] lend my thought; Grant me, time’s Father, world-containing King A pow’r, of thee in pow’rful lays to sing, That as thy beauty in earth lives, heaven shines, So it may dawn or shadow in my lines.” (ll. 1–16.) At the close he prays: “What wit cannot conceive, words say of thee, Here, where, as in a mirror, we but see Shadows of shadows, atoms of thy might, Still owly-eyed when staring on thy light, Grant that, released from this earthly jail, And freed of clouds which here our knowledge veil, In heaven’s high temples, where thy praises ring, I may in sweeter notes hear angels sing.” (ll. 329–335.) “A Prayer for Mankind,” however, opens with the note of humble adoration and a sense of sin. “Great God, whom we with humble thoughts adore, Eternal, infinite, almighty King, · · · · · At whose command clouds dreadful thunders sound! Ah! spare us worms; weigh not how we, alas Evil to ourselves, against thy laws rebel; Wash off those spots which still in mind’s clear glass, Though we be loath to look, we see too well; Deserv’d revenge O do not, do not take!” (ll. 1–13.) It closes similarly: “Grant, when at last our souls these bodies leave, Their loathsome shops of sin, and mansions blind, And doom before thy royal seat receive, They may a Saviour, not a judge thee find.” (ll. 65–68.) In Spenser’s “Hymne of Heavenly Beautie” in the first portion of which he sings the ascent of the mind through ever rising stages of perfection to “that Highest farre beyond all telling,” the mingling of these two ways of approach to God is very apparent. Spenser is first a Platonist and then a Christian. How, he asks, if God’s glory is such that the sun is dimmed by comparison, can we behold Him? “The meanes therefore which unto us is lent, Him to behold, is on his workes to looke, Which he hath made in beauty excellent, And in the same, as in a brasen booke, To reade enregistred in every nooke His goodnesse, which his beautie doth declare, For all thats good, is beautifull and faire.