Tell hir, that hir sweete Tongue was wonte to make me mirth.

Nowe doe I nightly waste, wanting my kindely reste:
Nowe doe I dayly starve, wanting my lively foode:
Nowe doe I alwayes dye, wanting thy timely mirth.

And if I waste, who will bewaile my heavy chaunce?
And if I starve, who will record my cursed end?
And if I dye, who will saye: _this was Immerito_?

FOOTNOTES:

[4:1]

----Since the winged god his planet clear
Began in me to move, one year is spent:
The which doth longer unto me appear
Than _all those forty_ which my life outwent.

_Sonnet_ LX., probably written in 1593 or 1594.

[5:2] Leicester House, then Essex House, in the Strand.

[5:3] Earl of Essex.

[5:4] At Cadiz, June 21, 1596.

[6:5] _Sonnet_ LXXIV.

[6:6] _Colin Clout's come Home again_, l. 536. Craik, _Spenser_, i. 9.
10.

[7:7] See _The Spending of the Money of Robert Nowell_, 1568-1580: from
the MSS. at Towneley Hall. Edited by Rev. A. B. Grosart, 1877.

[9:8] H. B. Wilson, _Hist. of Merchant Taylors' School_, p. 23.

[13:9] Comp. _Sheph. Cal._ April l. 36. June l. 8. F. Q. 6. 10. 7.

[22:1] Published in June, 1580. Reprinted incompletely in Haslewood,
_Ancient Critical Essays_ (1815), ii. 255. Extracts given in editions of
Spenser by Hughes, Todd, and Morris. The letters are of April, 1579, and
October, 1580.

CHAPTER II.

THE NEW POET--THE SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR.

[1579.]

It is clear that when Spenser appeared in London, he had found out his
powers and vocation as a poet. He came from Cambridge, fully conscious
of the powerful attraction of the imaginative faculties, conscious of an
extraordinary command over the resources of language, and with a
singular gift of sensitiveness to the grace and majesty and
suggestiveness of sound and rhythm, such as makes a musician. And
whether he knew it or not, his mind was in reality made up, as to what
his English poetry was to be. In spite of opinions and fashions round
him, in spite of university pedantry and the affectations of the court,
in spite of Harvey's classical enthusiasm, and Sidney's Areopagus, and
in spite of half-fancying himself converted to their views, his own
powers and impulses showed him the truth, and made him understand better
than his theories what a poet could and ought to do with English speech
in its free play and genuine melodies.