Edmund Spenser quotes
Edmund Spenser
Birthdate: 1552
Date of death: 13. January 1599
Other names: אדמונד ספנסר, ادموند اسپنسر, एडमंड स्पेंसर
Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognized as one of the premier craftsmen of nascent Modern English verse, and is often considered one of the greatest poets in the English language. He was deeply affected by Irish faerie mythology, which he knew from his home at Kilcolman and possibly from his Irish wife Elizabeth Boyle. His house was burned to the ground during the Nine Years' War, causing him to flee Ireland.
Works
Quotes Edmund Spenser
„For there is nothing lost, that may be found, if sought.“
— Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
Source: The Faerie Queene
„Ah! when will this long weary day have end,
And lende me leave to come unto my love?
- Epithalamion“
Source: Amoretti and Epithalamion
„There is nothing lost, but may be found, if sought.
(No hay nada perdido, que no pueda encontrarse, si se lo busca)“
Source: The Faerie Queene, Book Five
„A bold bad man, that dar'd to call by name
Great Gorgon, Prince of darknesse and dead night.“
— Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
Canto 1, stanza 37
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book I
„And is there care in Heaven? And is there love
In heavenly spirits to these Creatures bace?“
— Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
Canto 8, stanza 1
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book II
„A monster, which the Blatant beast men call,
A dreadfull feend of gods and men ydrad.“
— Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
Canto 12, stanza 37
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book V
„As when in Cymbrian plaine
An heard of bulles, whom kindly rage doth sting,
Doe for the milky mothers want complaine,
And fill the fieldes with troublous bellowing.“
— Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
Canto 8, stanza 11
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book I
„The gentle minde by gentle deeds is knowne.
For a man by nothing is so well bewrayd,
As by his manners.“
— Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
Canto 3, stanza 1; Spenser here is referencing and paraphrasing a statement from the "Wife of Bath's Tale" of Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer: "he is gentil that doth gentil dedis."
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book VI
„Ill can he rule the great, that cannot reach the small.“
— Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
Canto 2, stanza 43
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book V
„O happy earth,
Whereon thy innocent feet doe ever tread!“
— Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
Canto 10, stanza 9
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book I
„What more felicitie can fall to creature
Than to enjoy delight with libertie,
And to be lord of all the workes of Nature,
To raine in th' aire from earth to highest skie,
To feed on flowres and weeds of glorious feature.“
Muiopotmos: or, The Fate of the Butterflie, line 209; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
„Dan Chaucer, well of English undefyled,
On Fames eternall beadroll worthie to be fyled.“
— Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
Canto 2, stanza 32
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book IV
„Into the woods thenceforth in hast she went,
To seeke for hearbes, that mote him remedy;
For she of hearbes had great intendiment,
Taught of the Nymphe, which from her infancy
Her nourced had in trew Nobility:
There, whether it divine Tobacco were,
Or Panachaea, or Polygony,
She found, and brought it to her patient deare
Who al this while lay bleeding out his hart-bloud neare.“
— Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
Canto 5, stanza 32
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book III
„Sweete Themmes runne softly, till I end my Song.“
The last line of each stanza
This is often attributed to T. S. Eliot, who does indeed quote it in The Waste Land
Prothalamion (1596)
„For we by conquest, of our soveraine might,
And by eternall doome of Fate's decree,
Have wonne the Empire of the Heavens bright.“
— Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
Canto vi, stanza 33
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book VII
„Behold, whiles she before the altar stands,
Hearing the holy priest that to her speakes,
And blesseth her with his two happy hands.“
Epithalamion, line 223; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
„Ay me, how many perils doe enfold
The righteous man, to make him daily fall!“
— Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
Canto 8, stanza 1
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book I
„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.“
— Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
Introduction, stanza 1
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book V
