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Edmund Spenser Quotes

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.

✵ 1552 – 13. January 1599  •  Other names एडमंड स्पेंसर, ادموند اسپنسر, אדמונד ספנסר
Edmund Spenser photo

Works

The Faerie Queene
Edmund Spenser
Amoretti
Amoretti
Edmund Spenser
The Shepheardes Calender
The Faerie Queene
Edmund Spenser
Amoretti
Amoretti
Edmund Spenser
The Shepheardes Calender
Edmund Spenser: 53 quotes6 likes

Famous Edmund Spenser Quotes

“For whatsoever from one place doth fall,
Is with the tide unto an other brought:
For there is nothing lost, that may be found, if sought.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Source: The Faerie Queene

“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.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 12, stanza 34
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book IV

“And all for love, and nothing for reward.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 8, stanza 2
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book II

“The noblest mind the best contentment has.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 1, stanza 35
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book I

“There is nothing lost, but may be found, if sought.

(No hay nada perdido, que no pueda encontrarse, si se lo busca)”

Edmund Spenser

Source: The Faerie Queene, Book Five

Edmund Spenser Quotes about love

“Ah! when will this long weary day have end,
And lende me leave to come unto my love?

- Epithalamion”

Edmund Spenser

Source: Amoretti and Epithalamion

“I hate the day, because it lendeth light
To see all things, but not my love to see.”

Edmund Spenser

Daphnaida, v. 407; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“With that I saw two swans of goodly hue
Come softly swimming down along the Lee:
Two fairer birds I yet did never see;
The snow which doth the top of Pindus strow
Did never whiter show,
Nor Jove himself, when he a swan would be
For love of Leda, whiter did appear”

Edmund Spenser

Source: Prothalamion (1596), Line 37

“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

“Fierce warres and faithfull loves shall moralize my song.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Introduction, stanza 1
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book I

Edmund Spenser: Trending quotes

“How oft do they their silver bowers leave
To come to succour us that succour want!”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 8, stanza 2
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book II

“The rolling wheel, that runneth often round,
The hardest steel in tract of time doth tear;
And drizzling drops, that often do redound,
The firmest flint doth in continuance wear:
Yet cannot I, with many a dropping tear,
And long entreaty, soften her hard heart,
That she will once vouchsafe my plaint to hear,
Or look with pity on my painful smart:
But when I plead, she bids me play my part;
And when I weep, she says, "Tears are but water";
And when I sigh, she says, "I know the art";
And when I wail, she turns herself to laughter;
So do I weep and wail, and plead in vain,
Whiles she as steel and flint doth still remain.”

Edmund Spenser Amoretti

Amoretti (1595), Sonnet XVIII https://www.bartleby.com/358/784.html

“Sweete Themmes runne softly, till I end my Song.”

Edmund Spenser

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)

Edmund Spenser Quotes

“Eftsoones they heard a most melodious sound.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 12, stanza 70
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book II

“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

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

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 7, stanza 30
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book VII

“But of his cheere did seeme too solemne sad;
Yet nothing did he dread, but ever was ydrad.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 1, stanza 2
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

“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

“I trow that countenance cannot lie,
Whose thoughts are legible in the eie.”

Edmund Spenser

An Elegie, or Friends Passion, for his Astrophill (1586), line 108

“Behold, whiles she before the altar stands,
Hearing the holy priest that to her speakes,
And blesseth her with his two happy hands.”

Edmund Spenser

Epithalamion, line 223; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“And as she lookt about, she did behold,
How over that same dore was likewise writ,
Be bold, be bold, and every where Be bold,
That much she muz'd, yet could not construe it
By any ridling skill, or commune wit.
At last she spyde at that same roomes upper end,
Another yron dore, on which was writ,
Be not too bold.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 11, stanza 54
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book III

“So every spirit, as it is most pure,
And hath in it the more of heavenly light,
So it the fairer bodie doth procure
To habit in, and it more fairely dight
With cheerful grace and amiable sight:
For of the soule the bodie forme doth take;
For the soule is forme, and doth the bodie make.”

Edmund Spenser

An Hymne in Honour of Beautie (1596), line 127

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

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 10, stanza 21
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book IV

“Full little knowest thou that hast not tride,
What hell it is in suing long to bide:
To loose good dayes, that might be better spent;
To wast long nights in pensive discontent;
To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow;
To feed on hope, to pine with feare and sorrow.
.........
To fret thy soule with crosses and with cares;
To eate thy heart through comfortlesse dispaires; 13
To fawne, to crowche, to waite, to ride, to ronne,
To spend, to give, to want, to be undonne.
Unhappie wight, borne to desastrous end,
That doth his life in so long tendance spend!”

Edmund Spenser

Mother Hubberds Tale, line 895; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Tell her the joyous Time will not be staid,
Unlesse she doe him by the forelock take.”

Edmund Spenser Amoretti

Amoretti, lxx; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“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

“I was promised on a time
To have reason for my rhyme;
From that time unto this season,
I received nor rhyme nor reason.”

Edmund Spenser

Lines on his Promised Pension; reported in Thomas Fuller, Worthies of England, vol ii, page 379, and in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“To kerke the narre from God more farre,
Has bene an old-sayd sawe;
And he that strives to touche a starre
Oft stombles at a strawe.”

Edmund Spenser book The Shepheardes Calender

The Shepheardes Calender, July, line 97; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“No daintie flowre or herbe that growes on grownd,
No arborett with painted blossoms drest
And smelling sweete, but there it might be fownd
To bud out faire, and throwe her sweete smels al arownd.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 6, stanza 12
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book II

“Her berth was of the wombe of morning dew,
And her conception of the joyous Prime.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 6, stanza 3
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book III

“I learned have, not to despise,
What ever thing seemes small in common eyes.”

Edmund Spenser

Visions of the Worlds Vanitie (1591), line 69

“Roses red and violets blew,
And all the sweetest flowres that in the forrest grew.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 6, stanza 6
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book III

“Death slue not him, but he made death his ladder to the skies.”

Edmund Spenser

Another [Epitaph] of the Same (1586), line 20

“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

“Is not short paine well borne, that brings long ease,
And layes the soul to sleepe in quiet grave?
Sleepe after toyle, port after stormie seas,
Ease after warre, death after life does greatly please.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 9, stanza 40
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book I

“A Gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 1, stanza 1
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book I

“Calm was the day, and through the trembling air
Sweet-breathing Zephyrus did softly play—
A gentle spirit, that lightly did delay
Hot Titan's beams, which then did glister fair”

Edmund Spenser

Source: Prothalamion (1596), Line 1

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

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 11, stanza 1
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book V

“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

“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

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

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 2, stanza 42
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book V

“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

“Entire affection hateth nicer hands.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 8, stanza 40
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book I

“Through thicke and thin, both over banke and bush
In hope her to attaine by hooke or crooke.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 1, stanza 17
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book III

“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

“For all that faire is, is by nature good;
That is a signe to know the gentle blood.”

Edmund Spenser

An Hymne in Honour of Beautie, line 139

“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

“As the great eye of heaven, shyned bright,
And made a sunshine in the shady place.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 3, stanza 4
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.”

Edmund Spenser

Muiopotmos: or, The Fate of the Butterflie, line 209; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“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

“That darksome cave they enter, where they find
That cursed man, low sitting on the ground,
Musing full sadly in his sullein mind.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 9, stanza 35
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book I

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