BOOK FRIENDS

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 230, 28 September 1935, Page 2 (Supplement)

BOOK FRIENDS

! Edmund Spenser. !

Edmund Spenser, who lived from 1552 to 1500, is known jik <lit* only great poet between Chaucer and Shakespeare, a period of 200 years, and he lmd as lasting an influence on English poetry as Chaucer had. He revived the melody of the English tongue, and so added to it that his tunefulness has been echoing through English poetry ever since.

As also did Chaucer and Milton, | Spenser lived an active public life apart from his work as a poet. On leaving Cambridge, ho sought a position at the Court, where he became friends with Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Philip Sidney, who was also a poet. Ilis first position was that of secretary to the Lord Lieutenant in Ireland, at this time a land of turmoil, and it was in Ireland that ho. planned the poem by which lie is chiefly remembered, the

"Faery Queen." This poem is really a collection of allegories, where such figures as Holiness, Temperance, Chastity, Justice and Courtesy come into contact with Falsehood, Pride, Unbelief and other harmful influences. The more prominent of these figures, too, was designed to represent living people, with Queen Elizabeth herself as the Faery Queen. Gloriana. The story takes us to Fairyland at the time of the annual festival, lasting 12 days, and on each of these days a brave knight lias to go forth on some adventure to fight against evils.

[ A stanza consisting of eight lines, each with ten syllables or five beats, followed by a ninth line of twelve syllables or six beats, that ends the stanza with a lingering, restful sound that, with the use of dignified words, becomes nmj"stic was originated by Spenser and has been used by many later poets. Besides the Faery Queen, Spenser wrote with equal sweetness and delicacy in other poeins. He lived in a twilight world of romance amid shadowy figures and as suited this fanciful world of the mind alone, his diction was continuously sweet and melodious in words as well as tones. It is his mixture of dainty fancy with melody of words that gives him a secure j lnco in our literature.

Spenser (lied in Tiondon ill and impoverished. but li is funeral in Westminster Abbey was splendidly symbolic of the influence of his life, for it was attended by his fellow poets, who. acknowledging him as a master of poetry, throw their pens into his grave.