FROM THE INDUCTION.'

[Sorrow guides the poet to the realms of the dead.]

Then looking upward to the heaven's leams,
With nighted stars thick powder'd every where,
Which erst so glisten'd with the golden streams,
That cheerful Phoebus spread from down his spherę
Beholding dark oppressing day so near,

The sudden sight reduced to my mind,
The sundry changes that in earth we find.

That musing on this worldly wealth in thought,
Which comes, and goes, more faster than we see
The flickering flame that with the fire is wrought,
My busy mind presented unto me

Such fall of peers as in the realms had be,
That oft I wish'd some would their woes descrive
To warn the rest whom fortune left alive.

And straight forth stalking with redoubled pace,
For that I saw the night draw on so fast,
In black all clad, there fell before my face
A piteous wight, whom woe had all forewaste:
Forth from her eyen the crystal tears out brast:
And sighing sore her hands she wrung and fold,
Tare all her hair, that ruth was to behold.

I stood aghast, beholding all her plight,
"Tween dread and dolour, so distrain'd in heart,
That, while my hairs upstarted with the sight,
The tears outstream'd for sorrow of her smart:
But, when I saw no end that could apart
The deadly dewle which she so sore did make,
With doleful voice then thus to her I spake :

'O Sorrow, alas, sith Sorrow is thy name,
And that to thee this drear doth well pertain,

In vain it were to seck 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,
That at thy sight I can but sigh and weep.'

'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
Adored her, perceiving now that she,
A goddess, sent by godly providence,

*

In earthly shape thus show'd herself to me,

To wail and rue this world's uncertainty:

And, while I honour'd thus her godhead's might,

With plaining voice these words to me she shright.

'I shall thee guide first to the grisly lake,
And thence unto the blissful place of rest,

Where thou shalt see, and hear, the plaint they mak
That whilom here bare swing among the best:
This shalt thou see: but great is the unrest
That thou must bide, before thou canst attain
Unto the dreadful place where these remain.'

Thence come we to the horrour and the hell,
The large great kingdoms, and the dreadful reign
Of Pluto in his throne where he did dwell,
The wide waste places, and the hugy plain,
The wailings, shrieks, and sundry sorts of pain,
The sighs, the sobs, the deep and deadly groan:
Earth, air, and all, resounding plaint and moan.
Here pul'd the babes, and here the maids unwed
With folded hands their sorry chance bewail'd,
Here wept the guiltless slain, and lovers dead,
That slew themselves when nothing else avail'd:
A thousand sorts of sorrows here, that wail'd

With sighs, and tears, sobs, shrieks, and all yfear,
That, oh, alas, it was a hell to hear.

Lo here, quoth Sorrow, princes of renown,
That whilom sat on top of fortune's wheel,
Now laid full low, like wretches whirled down,
Ev'n with one frown, that stay'd but with a smile:
And now behold the thing that thou, ere while,
Saw only in thought and what thou now shalt hear,
Recount the same to kesar, king and peer.'

COMPLAINT OF THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.

So long as fortune would permit the same,
I liv'd in rule and riches with the best :
And pass'd my time in honour and in fame,
That of mishap no fear was in my breast:
But false fortune, when I suspected least,

Did turn the wheel, and with a doleful fall
Hath me bereft of honour, lise, and all.

Lo, what avails in riches floods that flows?
Though she so smil'd, as all the world were his :
Even kings and kesars biden fortune's throws,
And simple sort must bear it as it is.

Take heed by me that blith'd in baleful bliss:
My rule, my riches, royal blood and all,
When fortune frown'd, the feller made my fall.

For hard mishaps, that happens unto such
Whose wretched state erst never fell no change,
Agrieve them not in any part so much
As their distress, to whom it is so strange
That all their lives, nay, passed pleasures range,
Their sudden woe, that aye wield wealth at will,
Algates their hearts more piercingly must thrill

• 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 blert,
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,

My chance, my change, the cause of all my care:
In wealth and woe, how fortune did me wrap,
With world at will, to win me to her snare :
Bid kings, bid kesars, bid all states beware,
And tell them this from me that tried it true.
Who reckless rules, right soon may hap to rue.

SLEEP.

By him lay heavy Sleep, the cousin of Death,
Flat on the ground, and still as any stone,
A very corpse, save yielding forth a breath:
Small keep took he, whom Fortune frowned on,
Or whom she lifted up into the throne

Of high renown but as a living death,
So, dead alive, of life he drew the breath.

The body's rest, the quiet of the heart,
The travail's ease, the still night's fear was he,
And of our life on earth the better part:
Reaver of sight, and yet in whom we see
Things oft that tide, and oft that never be:
Without respect, esteeming equally
King Croesus' pomp, and Irus' poverty

३

1

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 house. hold 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 accom panied Sir Walter Ralegh to London, and in 1595 published the first three books of The Faerie Que ne. In 1591 he returned to Ireland and a mi-cellaneous 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. 1:95-6 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