In this collection occurs “An Elegy on Sir Philip Sidney,” written by his sister, Mary Countess of Pembroke, the celebrated subject of Jonson’s pregnant Epitaph:—
“Underneath this sable herse,
Lies the subject of all verse,
Sidney’s sister, Pembroke’s mother.
Death, ere thou hast killed another
Learn’d, and fair, and good as she,
Time shall throw a dart at thee.”
In the same year were published his “Amoretti,” or Sonnets, apparently written during his courtship of a less faithless fair than Rosalind, whom he afterwards married, and by her left several children. These sonnets overflow with chaste sentiments and beautiful imagery, and are, in truth,
“Such tales, as told to any maid
By such a man, in the green shade,
Were perilous to hear!”
The portrait of his Elizabeth is luxuriant and characteristic:—
“Fayre is my love, when her fayre golden haires
With the loose wynd ye waving chance to marke;
Fayre, when the rose in her red cheekes appeares;
Or in her eyes the fyre of love does sparke;
Fayre, when her brest, lyke a rich laden barke,
With pretious merchandize she forth doth lay;
Fayre, when that cloud of pryde, which oft doth dark
Her goodly light, with smiles she drives away;
But fayrest she, when so she doth display
The gate with pearles and rubyes richly dight;
Throgh which her words so wise do make their way
To beare the message of her gentle spright.
The rest be woikes of Nature’s wonderment;
But this the worke of harts astonishment.”
In the tenth Canto of Book VI. of the Faerie Queene, she is also described; and the poet claims for her the honours of a “Fourth Grace;” and in the seventy-fourth sonnet classing her with his mother, and the queen, as “Ye three Elizabeths,” he calls her,
“The third, my love, my lifes last ornament,
By whom my spirit out of dust was raysed:
To speake her prayse and glory excellent,
Of all alive most worthy to be praysed.”
But the “Epithalamion,” written on his marriage with the lady of his love, far transcends everything of the like description. “It is a strain redolent of a Bridegroom’s joy and of a Poet’s fancy.—It is an intoxication of ecstacy, ardent, noble, and pure.”[1] There is no other nuptial song of equal beauty in our language. Spenser has thrown his whole soul into this glorious lay; and it stands confessed the very essence of his imaginative genius.
The “Fowre Hymnes on Love and Beautie,” dedicated to the Countesses of Cumberland and Warwick, the dedication to whom is not a little curious, and the “Prothalamion,” in honour of the marriages of Ladies Elizabeth and Catherine Somerset, to H. Gifford and
- ↑ Hallam.
