"The Faerie Queene" by Edmund Spenser

I've been re-reading Book 3, Canto 2, about how Britomart fell in love with a handsome soldier she saw in a magic mirror made by Merlin. It's a wonderful story, written in Spenser's most musical rhythms, and one of the best aspects of it is the loving friendship shown between Britomart and her nurse, Glauce. In mesmerizing cadences, Spenser spins a mystical tale for the reader -- a tale I could re-read again and again.

The Faerie Queene, by Edmund Spenser

     Lately  I've been reading Book 3 of Spenser's classic poem, and I've enjoyed some of the cantos immensely. There's the usual elegance of his verbal music, some of the most graceful rhythms in all of English literature. I especially enjoyed this passage in a description of Venus taking care of Adonis as he slept:
Where him to sleepe she gently would persuade, 
Or bathe him in a fountaine by some couert glade. 
And whilst he slept, she ouer him would spred 
Her mantle, colour’d like the starry skies, 
And her soft arme lay vndemeath his hed, 
And with ambrosiall kisses bathe his eyes.
     In a way, Spenser's rhythms are fairly simple -- mostly alliteration with a strict adherence to iambic pentameter -- but in that simplicity he manages to create music of great beauty.

DANIEL DERONDA and THE FAERIE QUEENE

Ah, I'm a lucky reader these days, alternating between the harmonies and descriptions of Spenser and the profound philosophical sentences of George Eliot. I do believe that The Fairie Queene is one of the most beautiful poems I have ever read, bar none, and I find myself highlighting a sentence or two on each page of Eliot's novel. The story is deepening, growing more intense and revelatory. Gwendolyn is entirely ashamed of what she's done with her life, and it seems like Deronda may become her "teacher" and show her a new way to live.

THE FAERIE QUEENE

I've been reading parts of Spenser's great poem today, and came across these very musical lines:

As gentle Shepheard in sweete euen-tide,
    When ruddy Phoebus gins to welke in west,
    High on an hill, his flocke to vewen wide,
    Markes which do byte their hasty supper best;
    A cloud of combrous gnattes do him molest,
    All striuing to infixe their feeble stings,
    That from their noyance he no where can rest,
    But with his clownish hands their tender wings
He brusheth oft, and oft doth mar their murmurings.

And here's another lovely stanza::

At length they chaunst to meet vpon the way
    An aged Sire, in long blacke weedes yclad,
    His feete all bare, his beard all hoarie gray,
    And by his belt his booke he hanging had;
    Sober he seemde, and very sagely sad,
    And to the ground his eyes were lowly bent,
    Simple in shew, and voyde of malice bad,
    And all the way he prayed, as he went,
And often knockt his brest, as one that did repent. 


...and another ...

A little lowly Hermitage it was,
    Downe in a dale, hard by a forests side,
    Far from resort of people, that did pas
    In trauell to and froe: a little wyde
    There was an holy Chappell edifyde,
    Wherein the Hermite dewly wont to say
    His holy things each morne and euentyde:
    Thereby a Christall streame did gently play,
Which from a sacred fountaine welled forth alway.

No poet writing in English has ever written more musically!