Poem 17

Now ceasse ye damsels your delights forepast,

Enough is it, that all the day was youres:

Now day is doen, and night is nighing fast:

Now bring the Bryde into the brydall boures.

Now night is come, now soone her disaray,

And in her bed her lay;

Lay her in lillies and in violets,

And silken courteins ouer her display,

And odourd sheetes, and Arras couerlets,

Behold how goodly my faire loue does ly

In proud humility;

Like vnto Maia, when as Ioue her tooke,

In Tempe, lying on the flowry gras,

Twixt sleepe and wake, after she weary was,

With bathing in the Acidalian brooke

Now it is night, ye damsels may be gon,

And leaue my loue alone,

And leaue likewise your former lay to sing:

The woods no more shal answere, nor your echo 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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Poem 17

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