Quotessence
Home / Authors / Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser

Edmund Spenser Quotes

Poet

Filter quotes by topic

AllMenHeartIfsGentleMindDoeLoveMayFallGraceHeavenSweetBitterDeedsGrowsIllPoetryWellsWorldFirsts

Famous Edmund Spenser Quotes

“One Day I Wrote Her Name Upon the Strand 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.”

LoveDeathPoetryImmortality
Book:Amoretti And Epithalamion
Create image

“My Love Is Like To Ice, And I To Fire My love is like to ice, and I to fire; How comes it then that this her cold so great Is not dissolv'd through my so hot desire, But harder grows the more I her entreat? Or how comes it that my exceeding heat Is not delay’d by her heart-frozen cold; But that I burn much more in boiling sweat, And feel my flames augmented manifold! What more miraculous thing may be told, That fire, which all things melts, should harden ice; And ice, which is congeal’d with senseless cold, Should kindle fire by wonderful device! Such is the power of love in gentle mind, That it can alter all the course of kind.”

LovePoetry
Book:Amoretti And Epithalamion
Create image

“Men call you fayre, and you doe credit it, For that your self ye daily such doe see: But the trew fayre, that is the gentle wit, And vertuous mind, is much more praysd of me. For all the rest, how ever fayre it be, Shall turne to nought and loose that glorious hew: But onely that is permanent and free From frayle corruption, that doth flesh ensew. That is true beautie: that doth argue you To be divine and borne of heavenly seed: Deriv'd from that fayre Spirit, from whom al true And perfect beauty did at first proceed. He onely fayre, and what he fayre hath made, All other fayre lyke flowres untymely fade.”

PoetrySonnetBritish LiteratureEdmund SpenserAmoretti
Book:Amoretti And Epithalamion
Create image

“Unhappie Verse, the witnesse of my unhappie state, Make thy selfe fluttring wings of thy fast flying Thought”

StatesPoetryPoetWingsFlyingUnhappinessVerses
Book:The Works of Edmund Spenser: With a Selection of Notes from Various Commentators; and a Glossarial Index: to which is Prefixed, Some Account of the Life of Spenser
Create image