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

By Edmund Spenser

One of the greatest of English poets, Edmund Spenser was born in East Smithfield, London, in 1552. He was educated in London at the Merchant Taylors' School and later at Pembroke College, Cambridge. In 1579, he published The Shepheardes Calender, his first major work. Edmund journeyed to Ireland in July 1580, in the service of the newly appointed Lord Deputy, Arthur Grey, 14th Baron Grey de Wilton. His time included the terrible massacre at the Siege of Smerwick. The epic poem, The Faerie Queene, is acknowledged as Edmund’s masterpiece. The first three books were published in 1590, and a second set of three books were published in 1596. Indeed the reality is that Spenser, through his great talents, was able to move Poetry in a different direction. It led to him being called a Poet’s Poet and brought rich admiration from Milton, Raleigh, Blake, Wordsworth, Keats, Byron, and Lord Tennyson, among others. Spenser returned to Ireland and in 1591, Complaints, a collection of poems that voices complaints in mournful or mocking tones was published. In 1595, Spenser published Amoretti and Epithalamion. The volume contains eighty-nine sonnets. In the following year Spenser wrote a prose pamphlet titled A View of the Present State of Ireland, a highly inflammatory argument for the pacification and destruction of Irish culture. On January 13th 1599 Edmund Spenser died at the age of forty-six. His coffin was carried to his grave in Westminster Abbey by other poets, who threw many pens and pieces of poetry into his grave followed with many tears.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Copyright Group
• Release date: Aug 17, 2015
• ISBN: 9781785433122

Book preview

Complaints by Edmund Spenser

CONTAINING SUNDRIE SMALL POEMES OF THE WORLDS VANITIE WHEREOF THE NEXT PAGE MAKETH MENTION

One of the greatest of English poets, Edmund Spenser was born in East Smithfield, London, in 1552.

He was educated in London at the Merchant Taylors' School and later at Pembroke College, Cambridge.  In 1579, he published The Shepheardes Calender, his first major work.

Edmund journeyed to Ireland in July 1580, in the service of the newly appointed Lord Deputy, Arthur Grey, 14th Baron Grey de Wilton. His time included the terrible massacre at the Siege of Smerwick.

The epic poem, The Faerie Queene, is acknowledged as Edmund’s masterpiece. The first three books were published in 1590, and a second set of three books were published in 1596.

Indeed the reality is that Spenser, through his great talents, was able to move Poetry in a different direction.  It led to him being called a Poet’s Poet and brought rich admiration from Milton, Raleigh, Blake, Wordsworth, Keats, Byron, and Lord Tennyson, among others.

Spenser returned to Ireland and in 1591, Complaints, a collection of poems that voices complaints in mournful or mocking tones was published.

In 1595, Spenser published Amoretti and Epithalamion. The volume contains eighty-nine sonnets.

In the following year Spenser wrote a prose pamphlet titled A View of the Present State of Ireland, a highly inflammatory argument for the pacification and destruction of Irish culture.

On January 13th 1599 Edmund Spenser died at the age of forty-six.  His coffin was carried to his grave in Westminster Abbey by other poets, who threw many pens and pieces of poetry into his grave followed with many tears.

Index of Contents

THE PRINTER TO THE GENTLE READER

INTRODUCTION

Dedicated to the Right Noble And Beautifull Ladie, The Ladie Marie Countesse of Pembroke

THE RUINES OF TIME

THE TEARES OF THE MUSES – To The Right Honorable The Lady Strange

THE TEARES OF THE MUSES

VIRGILS GNAT – Long Since Dedicated to the Most Noble and Excellent Lord, The Earle of Leicester

VIRGILS GNAT

PROSOPOPOIA or MOTHER HUBBERDS TALE – Dedicated to the Right Honorable the Lady Compton and Mountegle

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE, THE LADIE COMPTON AND MOUNTEGLE

RUINES OF ROME: BY BELLAY

MUIOPOTMOS, or THE FATE OF THE BUTTERFLIE – Dedicated to the Most Faire and Vertuous Ladie: The Ladie Carey

TO THE RIGHT WORTHY AND VERTUOUS LADIE; THE LADIE CAREY

MUIOPOTMOS or THE FATE OF THE BUTTERFLIE

VISIONS OF THE WORLDS VANITIE

THE VISIONS OF BELLAY

THE VISIONS OF PETRARCH

Edmund Spenser – A Short Biography

Edmund Spenser – A Concise Bibliography

THE PRINTER TO THE GENTLE READER

Since my late setting foorth of the Faerie Queene, finding that it hath found a favourable passage amongst you, I have sithence endevoured by all good meanes (for the better encrease and accomplishment of your delights,) to get into my handes such smale poemes of the same authors as I heard were disperst abroad in sundrie hands, and not easie to bee come by, by himselfe; some of them having bene diverslie imbeziled and purloyned from him, since his departure over sea. Of the which I have by good meanes gathered togeather these fewe pareels present, which I have caused to bee imprinted altogeather, for that they al seeme to containe like matter of argument in them, being all complaints and meditations of the worlds vanitie, verie grave and profitable. To which effect I understand that he besides wrote sundrie others, namelie, Ecclesiastes and Canticum Canticorum translated, A Senights Slumber, The Hell of Lovers, his Purgatorie, being all dedicated to ladies, so as it may seeme he ment them all to one volume: besides some other pamphlets looselie scattered abroad: as The Dying Pellican, The Howers of the Lord, The Sacrifice of a Sinner, The Seven Psalmes, &c., which when I can either by himselfe or otherwise attaine too, I meane likewise for your favour sake to set foorth. In the meane time, praying you gentlie to accept of these, and gracious-lie to entertaine the ‘new poet,’ I take leave.

INTRODUCTION

Though Complaints was not published till 1591, a year after the first issue of the Faery Queen, the poems of which it is composed are more properly to be classed with the Shepherd’s Calendar. Most of them might have been printed, though perhaps not exactly as they now stand, before 1580; the others are best understood in company with these. The Calendar and Complaints, indeed, taken together, are the record of Spenser’s growth to maturity.

The circumstances of the publication are very oddly confused. In the opening address the credit for the whole enterprise is assumed by ‘the Printer,’ Ponsonby, who, we are told, hunted the poems out and made up and issued the volume by his own efforts. This work, we gather, was mainly prosecuted after the poet’s ‘departure over sea’—his return, that is, to Ireland early in 1591. And the volume certainly was published after his ‘departure.’ Yet we know that it had been made ready for printing while he was still in England. It appears on the Stationers’ Register for December 29, 1590, as approved by one of the official censors: at that time, therefore, the copy must have been at least approximately complete. Three of the poems, moreover, ‘The Tears of the Muses,’ ‘Mother Hubberd’s Tale,’ and ‘Muiopotmos,’ the central poems of the volume, bear signs of having been prepared for the press by himself and issued individually—‘Muiopotmos’ in 1590. The plausible address of ‘the Printer,’ in fine, is not wholly to be trusted. What, then, is to be made of it? According to Dr. Grosart, it was devised by the poet as a blind, in the manner of Swift. For such a device one seeks a reason. May this be that, as, in 1579 (by the first letter to Harvey), he was shy of ‘seeming to utter his writings for gaine and commoditie,’ so now, but a year after the issue of the Faery Queen. he was loth to accept the full responsibility of a second considerable volume? Any account of the publication, however, must be very largely conjectural.

The chronology of the poems is less in doubt. Though two or three of them are somewhat hard to place, the majority can at least be grouped in certain main periods with reasonable probability. First of all is the group that belongs to his university days, 1570–1576, and his subsequent sojourn in Lancashire: ‘The Visions of Petrarch,’ ‘The Visions of Bellay,’ ‘Ruins of Rome,’ and, perhaps, ‘Visions of the World’s Vanity.’ Following upon these days is what may loosely be called his first London period, during which, until it ended with his departure for Ireland in 1580, his headquarters were probably in the capital. These three years were of marked literary activity. To them belong most, if not all, of the Calendar, and presumably the greater number of his so-called ‘lost works,’ besides the beginnings of the Faery Queen; to them belong also some of the most important ‘complaints,’ ‘Virgil’s Gnat,’ ‘Mother Hubberd’s Tale,’ and, less certainly, ‘The Tears of the Muses.’ Then follow the years of service in Ireland, till Raleigh brought him back in 1589. During this period he would seem to have given his leisure for poetry almost exclusively to the Faery Queen. Of the two remaining ‘complaints,’ ‘The Ruins of Time’ was written shortly after his return to England, and ‘Muiopotmos’ perhaps at about the same time.

‘The Ruins of Time’ and ‘Muiopotmos’ were composed not long before publication and probably needed no retouching. ‘Mother Hubberd’s Tale’ and ‘The Tears of the Muses,’ early poems, were to some extent revised for the press. The others, one may think, were allowed to appear as first finished, or were at most but casually retouched. For, from the general tenor of his output, one infers that Spenser was not very sedulous in the revision of work once completed, and these poems were relatively unimportant—all but one, translations. They are not, like their companions, dedicated to people alive and influential in 1590: their chief function, indeed, would seem to be to fill out the volume. If Ponsonby really had a share in the collecting of Complaints, it must have been these, or some of them, that he gathered.

To the reader of Complaints one name recurs more frequently than others, that of Joachim Du Bellay, who, from 1549 to his early death in 1560, was one of the leaders of the new school of poetry in France. From him Spenser translated ‘The Visions of Bellay’ and ‘Ruins of Rome,’ and from him chiefly he must have acquired those poetic theories of the Pléiade which are the staple of ‘The Tears of the Muses.’ Du Bellay is a personality of great attractiveness. Not so distinguished an artist as his colleague Ronsard, he had qualities of mind and character that win us more: dignity untouched by arrogance, guarded from it by native sense of fitness, the distinction of a finely congruous nature; in especial, a singularly penetrating and human melancholy. On any Elizabethan author of a volume of ‘complaints’ his influence might be among the deepest of that day. It is noteworthy, however, that his really central work, the Regrets, does not seem to have touched Spenser at all. And indeed, the ‘life-long vein of melancholy’ which Dr. Grosart detects in ‘the newe poete’ must have been, at best, rather thin. His elegies are hardly convincing. When he strikes the note of personal disappointment, his verse occasionally betrays a feeling akin to sadness, but the bulk of his really characteristic and genuine work is anything but sad. In the Faery Queen one may search far and wide, in vain, for a touch of that peculiar feeling which pervades the romance-epic of the genuinely melancholy Tasso. His most constant mood would seem rather to have been a serenity neither sad nor cheerful. In any case, one will not infer his temperament from the professed melancholy of his earlier work. That much of the Calendar is gloomy, that he wrote a whole volume of ‘complaints,’ was to have been expected: work in that vein was a convention of the days into which he was born. The cosmopolitan pastoral invited, if it did not impose, a strain of lamentation, and in England, since the days of Sir Thomas Wyatt, love-poetry in the manner and tone of the plaintive Petrarch, meditations upon the vanity of life, elegies, stories of the falls of the mighty had formed, in good measure, the staple of serious poetry. Spenser’s early work but continues a convention already well established.

DEDICATED TO THE RIGHT NOBLE AND BEAUTIFULL LADIE, THE LADIE MARIE COUNTESSE OF PEMBROOKE

Most honourable and bountifull Ladie, there bee long sithens deepe sowed in my brest the seede of most entire love and humble affection unto that most brave knight, your noble brother deceased; which taking roote began in his life time some-what to bud forth, and to shew themselves to him, as then in the weakenes of their first spring: and would in their riper strength (had it pleased High God till then to drawe out his daies) spired forth fruit of more perfection. But since God hath disdeigned the world of that most noble spirit, which was the hope of all learned men, and the patron of my young Muses; togeather with him both their hope of anie further fruit was cut off, and also the tender delight of those their first blossoms nipped and quite dead. Yet sithens my late cumming into England, some frends of mine (which might much prevaile with me, and indeede commaund me) knowing with howe straight bandes of duetie I was tied to him, as also bound unto that noble house, (of which the chiefe hope then rested in him) have sought to revive them by upbraiding me, for that I have not shewed anie thankefull remembrance towards him or any of them, but suffer their names to sleep in silence and forgetfulnesse. Whome chieflie to satisfie, or els to avoide that fowle blot of unthankefulnesse, I have conceived this small poeme, intituled by a generall name of The Worlds Ruines: yet speciallie intended to the renowming of that noble race, from which both you and he sprong, and to the eternizing of some of the chiefe of them late deceased. The which I dedicate unto your Ladiship as whome it most speciallie concerneth, and to whome I acknowledge my selfe bounden, by manie singular favours and great graces. I pray for your honourable happinesse: and so humblie kisse your handes.

Your Ladiships ever humblie at commaund,

Edmund Spenser.

THE RUINES OF TIME

It chaunced me on day beside the shore

Of silver streaming Thamesis to bee,

Nigh where the goodly Verlame stood of yore,

Of which there now remaines no memorie,

Nor anie little moniment to see,

By which the travailer that fares that way

This once was she may warned be to say.

There on the other side, I did behold

A woman sitting sorrowfullie wailing,

Rending her yeolow locks, like wyrie golde

About her shoulders careleslie downe trailing,

And streames of teares from