Edmund Spenser Quotes - Page 2

For since mine eyes your joyous sight did miss, my cheerful day is turned to cheerless night.

And painefull pleasure turnes to pleasing paine.

Together linkt with adamantine chains.

Nothing under heaven so strongly doth allure the sense of man, and all his mind possess, as beauty's love.

A circle cannot fill a triangle, so neither can the whole world, if it were to be compassed, the heart of man; a man may as easily fill a chest with grace as the heart with gold. The air fills not the body, neither doth money the covetous mind of man.

All flesh doth frailty breed!

All that in this world is great or gay, Doth, as a vapor, vanish and decay.

The poets scrolls will outlive the monuments of stone. Genius survives; all else is claimed by death.

Laws ought to be fashioned unto the manners and conditions of the people whom they are meant to benefit, and not imposed upon them according to the simple rule of right.

All that in this delightful garden grows should happy be and have immortal bliss.

My Love is like to ice, and I to fire: How comes it then that this her cold so great Is not dissolved through my so hot desire, But harder grows the more I her entreat?

One day I wrote her name upon the strand, But came the waves and washèd it away: Again I wrote it with a second hand, But came the tide and made my pains his prey. Vain man (said she) that dost in vain assay A mortal thing so to immortalise; For I myself shall like to this decay, And eke my name be wipèd out likewise. Not so (quod I); let baser things devise To die in dust, but you shall live by fame; My verse your virtues rare shall eternise, And in the heavens write your glorious name: Where, when as Death shall all the world subdue, Our love shall live, and later life renew.

Who will not mercy unto others show, How can he mercy ever hope to have?

For deeds to die, however nobly done, And thoughts of men to as themselves decay, But wise words taught in numbers for to run, Recorded by the Muses, live for ay.

Fresh spring the herald of love's mighty king.

All love is sweet Given or returned And its familiar voice wearies not ever.

Make haste therefore, sweet love, whilst it is prime, For none can call again the passed time.

Ah! when will this long weary day have end, And lende me leave to come unto my love? - Epithalamion

Much can they praise the trees so straight and high, The sailing pine,the cedar proud and tall, The vine-prop elm, the poplar never dry, The builder oak, sole king of forests all, The aspin good for staves, the cypress funeral, The laurel, meed of mighty conquerors And poets sage, the fir that weepest still, The yew obedient to the bender's will, The birch for shafts, the sallow for the mill, The myrrh sweet-bleeding in the bitter wound, The warlike beech, the ash for nothing ill, The fruitful olive, and the platane round, The carver holm, the maple seldom inward sound.

Man's wretched state, That floures so fresh at morne, and fades at evening late.

Full little knowest thou that hast not tried, What hell it is in suing long to bide: To loose good dayes, that might be better spent; To waste long nights in pensive discontent; To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow; To feed on hope, to pine with feare and sorrow.

How many great ones may remember'd be, Which in their days most famously did flourish, Of whom no word we hear, nor sign now see, But as things wip'd out with a sponge do perish, Because the living cared not to cherish No gentle wits, through pride or covetize, Which might their names forever memorize!

But O the exceeding grace Of highest God, that loves his creatures so, And all his works with mercy doth embrace, That blessed angels, he sends to and fro, To serve to wicked man, to serve his wicked foe.

Why then should witless man so much misweene That nothing is but that which he hath seene?

A sweet attractive kind of grace, A full assurance given by looks, Continual comfort in a face, The lineaments of Gospel books-- I trow that countenance cannot lye Whose thoughts are legible in the eye.