The verse is surcharged with alliteration.
O how great sorrow my sad soule assaid (I. ii. 24).
Sometimes her head she fondly would aguize
With gaudy girlonds or fresh flowers dight
About her necke, or rings of rushes plight (II. vi. 7).
Day and night keeping wary watch and ward
For feare least Force or Fraud should unaware
Breake in (II. vii. 25).
That her broad beauties beam great brightness threw (II. vii. 45).
Spenser’s metric, often obscured by fanciful spelling or uncertain pronunciation, is expertly varied. The Spenserian stanza, undoubtedly skillful, is nevertheless inferior to the Italian octave for narrative. It carries on with less ease. The sheer metrical task of the six completed books (3,732 stanzas, or 33,588 lines) was beyond Spenser’s revision. Some rhymes remain forced by stilted transposition, or upon insignificant words, as in the last line of the first example above, and in: