1. Edmund Spenser
The Wedding-Day

From “Epithalamion”
*        *        *        *        *NOW is my love all ready forth to come:
Let all the virgins therefore well awayt:
And ye fresh boyes, that tend upon her groome,
Prepare yourselves; for he is coming strayt.
Set all your things in...

Poet: Edmund Spenser
Love to Christ

From “An Hymne of Heavenly Love”
WITH all thy hart, with all thy soule and mind,
Thou must him love, and his beheasts embrace;
All other loves, with which the world doth blind
Weake fancies, and stirre up affections base,
Thou must renounce and utterly...

Poet: Edmund Spenser
The Ministry of Angels

From “The Faërie Queene,” Book II. Canto 8.
AND is there care in heaven? And is there love
  In heavenly spirits to these creatures base,
  That may compassion of their evils move?
  There is:—else much more wretched were the case
  Of men than beasts: but...

Poet: Edmund Spenser
Una and the Red Crosse Knight

From “The Faërie Queene,” Book I. Canto I.
  A GENTLE Knight was pricking on the plaine,
  Ycladd in mightie armes and silver shielde,
  Wherein old dints of deepe woundes did remaine,
  The cruell markes of many a bloody fielde;
  Yet armes till that time...

Poet: Edmund Spenser
Una and the Lion

From “The Faërie Queene,” Book I. Canto III.
  ONE day, nigh wearie of the yrkesome way,
  From her unhastie beast she did alight;
  And on the grasse her dainty limbs did lay
  In secrete shadow, far from all mens sight;
  From her fayre head her fillet...

Poet: Edmund Spenser
The Bower of Bliss

From “The Faërie Queene,” Book II. Canto XII.
  THERE the most daintie paradise on ground
  Itselfe doth offer to his sober eye,
  In which all pleasures plenteously abownd,
  And none does others happinesse envye;
  The painted flowres; the trees...

Poet: Edmund Spenser
The Cave of Sleep

From “The Faërie Queene,” Book I. Canto I.
  HE, making speedy way through spersèd ayre,
  And through the world of waters wide and deepe,
  To Morpheus house doth hastily repaire,
  Amid the bowels of the earth full steepe,
  And low, where dawning day...

Poet: Edmund Spenser
Beauty

From “An Hymne in Honor of Beautie”
SO every spirit, as it is most pure,
And hath in it the more of heavenly light,
So it the fairer bodie doth procure
To habit in, and it more fairly dight
With cheerfull grace and amiable sight;
For of the soule...

Poet: Edmund Spenser
“One day I wrote her name”

From “Amoretti.” Sonnet LXXV.
ONE day I wrote her name upon the strand,
  But came the waves, and washèd it away:
Agayne, I wrote it with a second hand;
  But came the tyde, and made my paynes his prey.
Vayne man, say’d she, that doest in vayne assay...

Poet: Edmund Spenser