The Modern view of the poet emphasizes originality. Many people today have even been conditioned to think of artists and poets as radicals, political liberals, those who only use art and the imagination to push for change in society. This was not the case for the Elizabethans. The pre-Modern world understood the poet as an heir and guardian of a tradition. Storytellers, poets, and artists did not aim to create entirely new, original stories. They built on the stories that they received. Edmund Spenser exemplified this traditional way of thinking.
Spenser was born in 1552 to a middle class family in London. In 1569 he went to Cambridge and was surrounded by the two great movements of his time: Puritanism and Humanism. C.S. Lewis, an authority on Spenser, explains that the Elizabethan Puritans were primarily committed to their idea of pure church discipline and governance, while the humanists (i.e. classicists) were primarily committed to the pure style of classical Latin. The narrow focus of fervor in both groups meant that they were not often in opposition:
They were often the same people, and nearly always the same sort of people: the young men ‘in the Movement’, the impatient progressives demanding a ‘clean sweep’. And they were united by a common (and usually ignorant) hatred for everything medieval: for scholastic philosophy, medieval Latin, romance, fairies, and chivalry.1
In 16th century England, that “radical” fervor, which so often affects the young, especially at university, was still not clamoring for something exactly new. Yet, there is a type of progressivism that imagines a “golden age” in the past and attempts to leap-frog over the intervening years. This is progressive in the sense that it attempts to disregard or even destroy the tradition by which we have access to the past. Spenser resisted this, despite the fashion of his humanist friends, for his imagination was thoroughly captured by the images and stories received from medieval literature.2
In 1580, Spenser became secretary to the Deputy of Ireland and from this point on his profession was in service to the Crown. While his true labor in life always remained poetry, he sadly never finished his chief life’s work: The Faerie Queene—a medieval romance, full of Christian allegory. In 1594, he was married and began to raise a family, but in 1598 the Irish rebelled against English rule, bringing personal tragedy to Spenser. “It is said (by Ben Jonson) that Spenser’s third child, a baby, died in the flames. By December Spenser had contrived to reach London, carrying dispatches about the late uprising. He died, certainly in poverty, as some say actually of hunger, in January 1599.”3
Edmund Spenser is a prime example of late Medieval and early Renaissance thinking. He is traditional, not original, and this can be seen in his models and styles. For example, the poems presented in this article are written in rhyme royal, stanzas of seven lines of iambic pentameter and rhyming ababbcc. This structure was popularized by the medieval poet Geoffrey Chaucer. But Spenser shows his love of tradition even more in his use of ancient and medieval images and cosmology. This is most readily seen in the way his poetry presents the created order and the redemptive story of sin and salvation.
Spenser’s Foure Hymnes, published in 1596, are good examples of this traditional understanding. C.S. Lewis describes these poems as “substantially meditations on chivalrous, monogamous, English love, enriched with colourings from Plato… and the medieval poets.”4 Interestingly, Spenser himself explains that the first two of the four poems, hymns in honor of Love and Beauty, were written in “the greener times of his youth” and he describes the second two poems on Heavenly Love and Heavenly Beauty as retractions. Lewis finds this strange as Christian theology does not condemn chaste earthly loves.5 Perhaps the retraction is due to his reliance on pagan mythological imagery in the early poems (although that position would not be consistent with his work in general). Or perhaps the later poems simply emphasize the desire to express the uncompromising command of the Law to love God above all things and to give thanks for the redemptive love of Christ.
The first poem, An Hymne In Honour Of Love, describes a traditional cosmology, received from ancient and medieval thought. While new discoveries were bringing scientific change, this older, more symbolic way of picturing the cosmos still influenced the vast majority of Elizabethan imaginations. The poem describes the created order set in place by a higher power. There is nothing random about this universe. Order is fundamental to nature at every level, even for the most basic elements. And personified Love is the ruling power that reigns over chaos, bringing order and harmony to the cosmos.
The earth, the ayre, the water, and the fyre,
Then gan to raunge themselves in huge array,
And with contrary forces to conspyre
Each against other by all meanes they may,
Threatning their owne confusion and decay:
Ayre hated earth, and water hated fyre,
Till Love relented their rebellious yre.
He then them tooke, and, tempering goodly well
Their contrary dislikes with loved meanes,
Did place them all in order, and compell
To keepe themselves within their sundrie raines,
Together linkt with adamantine chaines;
Yet so as that in every living wight
They mix themselves, and shew their kindly might.
Love holds the reins on the powers of creation and everything is linked together by the chains of his order. Every thing has its proper place and can only work properly when it remains in its place. This order and chain does not imprison but rather promotes life. An Hymne In Honour Of Love is not an overtly Christian poem, but it is an illustration of the truth manifested in nature that even pagans can recognize. This world is a harmony, not a chaos.
The third of the Foure Hymnes is An Hymne Of Heavenly Love, and this poem does make the shift to Christian theology. C.S. Lewis argues that “Most of this poem is a straight account of the Creation, Fall, and Redemption, such as any child in a Christian family learns before he is twelve … The truth is that the Hymn of Heavenly Love is a very simple, pious poem.”6 In both poems, Love is the power that creates and draws together and orders the cosmos. Only in this poem of Heavenly Love do we see rightly that this Love has its beginning in God. This is the eternal communion of love within the Holy Trinity.
Before this world’s great frame, in which al things
Are now containd, found any being-place,
Ere flitting Time could wag his eyas wings
About that mightie bound which doth embrace
The rolling spheres, and parts their houres by space,
That high eternall Powre, which now doth move
In all these things, mov’d in it selfe by love.
The poem begins with the love that is God, hidden within the inner workings of the Trinity, before time. From the eternal begetting of the Son and the procession of the Spirit, the love of God pours out in the creation of angels and men. Then comes the rejection of that love by the rebellion of Satan, his angels, and mankind. From there, the poem leads us to the ultimate sacrifice of love in the incarnation and death of Christ our Redeemer. We see the love of God in action.
Out of the bosome of eternall blisse,
In which he reigned with his glorious Syre,
He downe descended, like a most demisse
And abiect thrall, in fleshes fraile attyre,
That he for him might pay sinnes deadly hyre,
And him restore unto that happie state
In which he stood before his haplesse fate.
In flesh at first the guilt committed was,
Therefore in flesh it must be satisfyde;
Nor spirit, nor angel, though they man surpas,
Could make amends to God for mans misguyde,
But onely man himselfe, who selfe did slyde:
So, taking flesh of sacred virgins wombe,
For mans deare sake he did a man become.
In the next stanzas, the focus turns to the crucifixion, especially the moment of the spear piercing Christ’s heart. At the same time, we are brought into the poem. Malcolm Guite, modern poet and Anglican priest, points out: “What is really piercing Christ’s heart, says Spenser, is love for us! He is wounded by love for us in our woundedness… ‘Love’s deep wound’ (a great phrase) is piercing Christ’s heart, but immediately, in the next stanza, we are ourselves pierced and searched by it (‘launch’ means ‘lance’), and that piercing is our healing.”7
O huge and most unspeakeable impression
Of Loves deep wound, that pierst the piteous hart
Of that deare Lord with so entyre affection,
And, sharply launcing every inner part,
Dolours of death into his soule did dart,
Doing him die that never it deserved,
To free his foes, that from his heast had swerved!
What hart can feel least touch of so sore launch,
Or thought can think the depth of so deare wound?
Whose bleeding sourse their streames yet never staunch,
But stil do flow, and freshly still redownd,
To heale the sores of sinfull soules unsound,
And clense the guilt of that infected cryme,
Which was enrooted in all fleshly slyme.
In response to this great love, the poem asks how we can requite Him? In the remaining stanzas, Spenser provides the answers we also find in the great hymns by Johann Heermann and Johann Franck. In “O Dearest Jesus” by Heermann, we respond to the love of God by renouncing all earthly, sinful loves:
Yet unrequited, Lord, I would not leave Thee;
I will renounce whate’er doth vex or grieve Thee
And quench with thoughts of Thee and prayers most lowly
All fires unholy. (LSB 439:10)
In “Soul, Adorn Yourself with Gladness” by Franck, love is shown in obedience, and we respond with our own love for the Savior and His Sacrament:
Jesus, bread of life, I pray You,
Let me gladly here obey You.
By Your love I am invited,
Be Your love with love requited. (LSB 636:8)
Spenser provides both of these responses in his poem:
But he our life hath left unto us free,
Free that was thrall, and blessed that was band;
Ne ought demaunds but that we loving bee,
As he himselfe hath lov’d us afore-hand,
And bound therto with an eternall band;
Him first to love that was so dearly bought,
And next our brethren, to his image wrought…
With all thy hart, with all thy soule and mind,
Thou must him love, and his beheasts embrace;
All other loves, with which the world doth blind
Weake fancies, and stirre up affections base,
Thou must renounce and utterly displace,
And give thy self unto him full and free,
That full and freely gave himselfe to thee.
The poem concludes with a final stanza on the promise that our love for God will change all our earthly loves, replacing them and fulfilling them, when our affections are set on things above (Col. 3:2):
Then shall thy ravisht soul inspired bee
With heavenly thoughts, farre above humane skil,
And thy bright radiant eyes shall plainely see
Th’idee of his pure glorie present still
Before thy face, that all thy spirits shall fill
With sweete enragement of celestiall love,
Kindled through sight of those faire things above.
E.M.W. Tillyard, a Renaissance scholar who helped get C.S. Lewis a chair in Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge, rightly pointed out that in many of the Elizabethan poets like Spenser and Shakespeare: “The truth is illustrated that the poet is most individual when most orthodox and of his age.”8
Poetry is not meant to be entirely original. The poet is an heir and a guardian of a tradition. He builds on the stories that he has received. In this way, he shows his real skill and talent with language. Edmund Spenser exemplified this traditional way of thinking, seen most clearly in his description of such orthodox themes: the order and harmony of creation, the threat of chaos in the rebellion and fall of the devil and mankind, and the redemption achieved by the Son of God.
1 C.S. Lewis, “Edmund Spenser, 1552–99” in Studies in Medieval & Renaissance Literature (United Kingdom:Cambridge University Press, 1966) 121-122.
2 Ibid., 122
3 Ibid., 124
4 C. S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 1954), 376.
5 Ibid., 374
6 Ibid., 376
7 Malcolm Guite, Waiting on the Word: A poem a day for Advent, Christmas & Epiphany (Canterbury Press, 2015), 32–33.
8 E.M.W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture (Vintage Books), 108.
