Having from these suck'd all they had of worth And brought home that faith which you carry'd forth, I throughly love: but if myself I've won To know my rules, I have, and you have, Donne. THE MESSAGE. SEND home my long stray'd eyes to me, Fit for no good sight, keep them still. Send home my harmless heart again, Keep it still, 'tis none of mine. Yet send me back my heart and eyes, Or prove as false as thou dost now. SIR EDWARD DYER. 1550-1607. [BORN about 1550, at Sharpham, near Glastonbury; educated at Balliol College, Oxford; ambassador to Denmark, 1589; knighted, 1596; died, 1607.] TO PHILLIS THE FAIR SHEPHERDESS. My Phillis hath the morning Sun, At first to look upon her: And Phillis hath morn-waking birds, Her rising still to honor. My Phillis hath prime feathered flow. ers, That smile when she treads on them: And Phillis hath a gallant flock That leaps since she doth own them, But Phillis hath too hard a heart, Alas, that she should have it! [EDMUND SPENSER was born in London about 1552. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School: his first poetical performances, translations from Petrarch and Du Bellay, published without his name in a miscellaneous collection, belong to the time of his leaving school in 1569. From that year to 1576 he was at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. In 1579 he was in London, acquainted with Philip Sidney, and in Lord Leicester's household. In 1580 was published, but without his name, The Shepheards Calender; and in the autumn of that year he went to Ireland with Lord Grey of Wilton, as his private secretary. The remainder of his life, with the exception of short visits to England, was spent in Ireland, where he held various subordinate offices, and where he settled on a grant of forfeited land at Kilcolman, in the county of Cork. In 1589 he accompanied Sir Walter Raleigh to London, and in 1590 published the first three books of The Faerie Queene. In 1591 he returned to Ireland, and a miscellaneous collection of compositions of earlier and later dates (Complaints) was published in London. In June, 1594, he married, and the next year, 1595, he again visited London, and in Jan., 1595-6, published the second instalment of The Faerie Queene (iv-vi). With the same date, 1595, were published his Colin Clouts Come Home again, an account of his visit to the Court in 1589-90, and his Amoretti Sonnets, and an Epithalamion, relating to his courtship and marriage. At the end of 1598 his house was sacked and burnt by the Munster rebels, and he returned in great distress to London. He died at Westminster, Jan. 16, 1598-9, and was buried in the Abbey.] |