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The Works of Edmund Spenser

A Variorum Edition: Edited by Edwin Greenlaw: Charles Grosvenor Osgood: Frederick Morgan Padelford: Ray Heffner

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Colins Embleme.

La mort ny mord.

Embleme.

Which is as much to say, as death biteth not. For although by course of nature we be borne to dye, and being ripened with age, as with a timely haruest, we must be gathered in time, or els of our selues we fall like rotted ripe fruite fro the tree: yet death is not to be counted for euil, nor (as the Poete sayd a little before) as doome of ill desert. For though the trespasse of the first man brought death into the world, as the guerdon of sinne, yet being ouercome by the death of one, that dyed for al, it is now made (as Chaucer sayth) the grene path way to lyfe. So that it agreeth well with that was sayd, that Death byteth not (that is) hurteth not at all.