FROM THE INDUCTION.' [Sorrow guides the poet to the realms of the dead.] Then looking upward to the heaven's leams, The sudden sight reduced to my mind, That musing on this worldly wealth in thought, Such fall of peers as in the realms had be, That oft I wish'd some would their woes descrive, And straight forth stalking with redoubled pace, I stood aghast, beholding all her plight, 'O Sorrow, alas, sith Sorrow is thy name, * And that to thee this drear doth well pertain, In vain it were to seek to cease the same: But, as a man himself with sorrow slain, So I, alas, do comfort thee in pain, That here in sorrow art foresunk so deep, * For forth she paced in her fearful tale: 'Come, come,' quoth she, and see what I shall show, Come, hear the plaining and the bitter bale Of worthy men by Fortune overthrow : Come thou and see them rueing all in row, They were but shades that erst in mind thou roll'd: Come, come with me, thine eyes shall them behold.' Flat down I fell, and with all reverence In earthly shape thus show'd herself to me, And, while I honour'd thus her godhead's might, 'I shall thee guide first to the grisly lake, Where thou shalt see, and hear, the plaint they make Thence come we to the horrour and the hell, With sighs, and tears, sobs, shrieks, and all yfear, Lo here, quoth Sorrow, princes of renown, COMPLAINT OF THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM. So long as fortune would permit the same, Lo, what avails in riches floods that flows? And simple sort must bear it as it is. For hard mishaps, that happens unto such For of my birth, my blood was of the best, First born an earl, then duke by due descent: To swing the sway in court among the rest, Dame Fortune me her rule most largely lent, And kind with courage so my corpse had blent, That lo, on whom but me did she most smile? And whom but me, lo, did she most beguile? Now hast thou heard the whole of my unhap, SLEEP. By him lay heavy Sleep, the cousin of Death, Of high renown: but as a living death, The body's rest, the quiet of the heart, Reaver of sight, and yet in whom we see EDMUND SPENSER. [EDMUND SPENSER was born in London about 1552. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School: his first poetical performances, translations from Petrarch and Du Bellay, published without his name in a miscellaneous collection, belong to the time of his leaving school in 1569. From that year to 1576 he was at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. In 1579 he was in London, acquainted with Philip Sidney, and in Lord Leicester's household. In 1580 was published, but without his name, The Shepheards Calender; and in the autumn of that year he went to Ireland with Lord Grey of Wilton, as his private secretary. The remainder of his life with the exception of short visits to England, was spent in Ireland, where he held various subordinate offices, and where he settled on a grant of forfeited land at Kilcolman in the county of Cork. In 1589 he accompanied Sir Walter Ralegh to London, and in 1590 published the first three books of The Faerie Queene. In 1591 he returned to Ireland, and a miscel laneous collection of compositions of earlier and later dates (Complaints) was published in London. In June 1594 he married, and the next year, 1595, he again visited London, and in Jan. 1595-6 published the second instalment of The Faerie Queene (iv-vi). With the same date, 1595, were published his Colin Clouts Come Home again, an account of his visit to the Court in 1589-90, and his Amoretti Sonnets, and an Epithalamion, relating to his courtship and marriage. At the end of 1598 his house was sacked and burnt by the Munster rebels, and he returned in great distress to London. He died at Westminster, Jan. 16, 1598-9, and was buried in the Abbey.] Spenser was the first who in the literature of England since the Reformation made himself a name as a poet which could be compared with that of Chaucer, or of the famous Italians who then stood at the head of poetical composition. National energy had revived under the reign of Elizabeth, and with it had come a burst of poetical enthusiasm. Many persons tried their hand at poetry. Versification became a fashion. It was encouraged in the Court circles. The taste for poetry shows itself in a popular shape in ballads, and among scholars in translation; and amid a good |