Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. I. Early Poetry: Chaucer to Donne
Edmund Spenser (1552?–1599)Extracts from The Shepheard’s Calender: Chase after Love
Tho.It was upon a holiday,
When shepheardes groomes han leave to playe,
I cast to goe a shooting.
Long wandring up and downe the land,
With bowe and bolts in either hand,
For birds in bushes tooting,
At length within an Yvie todde,
(There shrouded was the little God)
I heard a busie bustling.
I bent my bolt against the bush,
Listening if any thing did rushe,
But then heard no more rustling:
Tho, peeping close into the thicke,
Might see the moving of some quicke,
Whose shape appeared not;
But were it faerie, feend, or snake,
My courage earnd it to awake,
And manfully thereat shotte.
With that sprong forth a naked swayne
With spotted winges, like Peacocks trayne,
And laughing lope to a tree;
His gylden quiver at his backe,
And silver bowe, which was but slacke,
Which lightly he bent at me:
That seeing, I levelde againe
And shott at him with might and maine,
As thicke as it had hayled.
So long I shott, that al was spent;
Tho pumie stones I hastly hent
And threwe; but nought availed:
He was so wimble and so wight,
From bough to bough he lepped light,
And oft the pumies latched.
Therewith affrayd, I ranne away:
But he, that earst seemd but to playe,
A shaft in earnest snatched,
And hit me running in the heele:
For then I little smart did feele,
But soone it sore encreased;
And now it ranckleth more and more,
And inwardly it festreth sore,
Ne wote I how to cease it.
Wil.Thomalin, I pittie thy plight,
Perdie with Love thou diddest fight:
I know him by a token;
For once I heard my father say,
How he him caught upon a day,
(Whereof he will be wroken)
Entangled in a fowling net,
Which he for carrion Crowes had set
That in our Peere-tree haunted:
Tho sayd, he was a winged lad,
But bowe and shafts as then none had,
Els had he sore be daunted.
But see, the Welkin thicks apace,
And stouping Phebus steepes his face:
Yts time to hast us homeward.