The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere

One peaceful spot in a storm-vexed isle
Shall wear for ever the past's calm smile;
Kilcolman Castle! There Spenser sate;
There sang, unweeting of coming fate.

That song he sang was a life-romance
Woven by Virtues in mystic dance
Where the gods and heroes of Grecian story
Themselves were Virtues in allegory.

True love was in it, but love sublimed,
Occult, high-reason'd, bewitch'd, be-rhymed!
The knight was the servant of ends trans-human,
The women were seraphs, the bard half woman.

Time and its tumults, stern shocks, hearts wrung,
To him were mad words to sweet music sung,
History to him an old breviary quaint
Bordered round with gold Angel and sworded Saint.

Creative indeed was that eye, sad Mary!
That hailed in thy rival a queen of faery,
And in Raleigh, half statesman, half pirate, could see
But the shepherd of ocean's green Arcady.

Under groves of Penshurst his first notes rang:
As Sidney lived so his Spenser sang:
From the well-head of Chaucer one stream found birth,
Like an Arethusa, on Irish earth.

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From the court he had fled, and the courtly lure:
One virgin muse in an age not pure
Wore Florimel's girdle, and mourned in song
(He guessed not its import) Ierne's wrong.

Roll onward, thou western Ilyssus, roll,
‘Mulla,’ far kenned by ‘old mountain Mole!’
With thy Shepherds a Calidore loved to dwell;
And beside him an Irish Pastorel.

Where are they, those garlands she flung on thy tide,
Bending over thee, giftless—that well-sung bride?
The flowers have passed by, but abideth the river;—
May thy Genius, its Guardian, be near it for ever!

‘Song made in lieu of many ornaments.’

Spenser's Epithalamium on his own Marriage.

University of Virginia Library

SPENSER.