Poem 1

YE learned sisters which haue oftentimes

beene to me ayding, others to adorne:

Whom ye thought worthy of your gracefull rymes,

That euen the greatest did not greatly scorne

To heare theyr names sung in your simply layes,

But ioyed in theyr prayse.

And when ye lift your owne mishaps to mourne,

Which death, or loue, or fortunes wreck did rayse,

Your string could soone to sadder tenor turne,

And teach the woods and waters to lament

Your dolefull dreriment.

Now lay those sorrowfull complaints aside,

And hauing all your heads with girland crownd,

Helpe me mine owne loues prayses to resound,

Ne let the same of any be enuide,

So Orpheus did for his owne bride,

So I vnto my selfe alone will sing,

The woods shall to me answer and my Eccho ring.

Edmund Spenser

Edmund Spenser (born 1552/53, London, England—died January 13, 1599, London) English poet whose long allegorical poem The Faerie Queene is one of the greatest in the English language. It was written in what came to be called the Spenserian stanza. In 1598 rebels attacked and burned Kilcolman Castle, forcing Spenser and his family to flee to Cork. In December he returned to England, where he delivered a report on the Irish crisis at Whitehall on Christmas Eve. Three weeks later, on 13 January 1599, he died, perhaps of illness brought on by exhaustion. He was buried soon after in the south transept of Westminster Abbey in the Poets’ Corner.

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