Edmund Spenser Quotes

Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas, Ease after war, death after life does greatly please.

But nothing new to him was that same pain;
Nor pain at all; for he so oft had tried . . .
and lov'd so oft in vain.

Deare knight, as deare, as euer knight was deare,
That all these sorrowes suffer for my sake,
High heuen behold the tedious toyle, ye for me take . . .

But double griefs afflict concealing hearts,
As raging flames who striveth to suppress.

Ah for pittie, wil ranke Winters rage,
These bitter blasts neuer ginne tasswage?
The keene cold blowes throug my beaten hyde,
All as I were through the body gryde.
My ragged rontes all shiver and shake,
As doen high Towers in an earthquake:
They wont in the wind wagge their wrigle tailes,
Perke as Peacock: but nowe it auales.

For we by conquest, of our soveraine might, And by eternall doome of Fate's decree, Have wonne the Empire of the Heavens bright.

And in his hand a sickle he did holde, To reape the ripened fruits the which the earth had yold.

The gentle minde by gentle deeds is knowne. For a man by nothing is so well bewrayd, As by his manners.

A monster, which the Blatant beast men call, A dreadfull feend of gods and men ydrad.

But Justice, though her dome [doom] she doe prolong, Yet at the last she will her owne cause right.

Ill can he rule the great, that cannot reach the small.

Who will not mercie unto others show, How can he mercy ever hope to have?

Me seemes the world is runne quite out of square, From the first point of his appointed sourse, And being once amisse growes daily wourse and wourse.

As withered weed through cruell winters tine, That feeles the warmth of sunny beames reflection, Liftes up his head, that did before decline And gins to spread his leafe before the faire sunshine.

For all that Nature by her mother-wit Could frame in earth.