Quotes from Edmund Spenser

Each goodly thing is hardest to begin.

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 lend me leave to come unto my love? How slowly do the hours their numbers spend! How slowly does sad Time his feathers move!

Together linkt with adamantine chains.

Gather therefore the Rose, whilst yet is prime, For soon comes age, that will her pride deflower: Gather the Rose of love, whilst yet is time.

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

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

And he that strives to touch the stars, Oft stumbles at a straw.

He that strives to touch the starts, oft stumbles at a straw.

Vaine is the vaunt, and victory unjust, that more to mighty hands, then rightfull cause doth trust.

Fresh spring the herald of love's mighty king.

Foul jealousy! that turnest love divine to joyless dread, and makest the loving heart with hateful thoughts to languish and to pine.

The man whom nature's self had made to mock herself, and truth to imitate.

Joy may you have and gentle hearts content Of your loves couplement: And let faire Venus, that is Queene of love, With her heart-quelling Sonne upon you smile

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?

To be wise and eke to love, Is granted scarce to gods above.

Waking love suffereth no sleepe: Say, that raging love dothe appall the weake stomacke: Say, that lamenting love marreth the musicall.

But as it falleth, in the gentlest hearts Imperious love hath highest set his throne, And tyrannizeth in the bitter smarts Of them, that to him buxom are and prone.

All sorts of flowers the which on earth do spring In goodly colours gloriously arrayed; Go to my love, where she is careless laid

In youth, before I waxe' d old, The blind boy,Venus' baby, For want of cunning made me bold, In bitter hive to grope for honey.

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

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.

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

The gentle mind by gentle deeds is known, For a man by nothing is so well betrayed As by his manners.