That life, with all its intrigues and self-seekings and scandals, had no charms for him. Once more settled in his home, he wrote an account of his recent absence from it, which he entitled Colin Clouts Come Home Again. This poem was not published till 1595; but, whatever additions were subsequently made to it, there can be no doubt it was originally written immediately after his return to Ireland. Sitting in the quiet to which he was but now restored, he reviewed the splendid scenes he had lately witnessed; he recounted the famous wits he had met, and the fair ladies he had seen in the great London world; and dedicated this exquisite diary to the friend who had introduced him into that brilliant circle. It would seem that Raleigh had accused him of indolence. That ever-restless schemer could not appreciate the poet's dreaminess. 'That you may see,' writes Spenser, 'that I am not alwaies ydle as yee think, though not greatly well occupied, nor altogither undutifull, though not precisely officious, I make you present of this simple pastorall, unworthie of your higher conceipt for the meanesse of the stile, but agreeing with the truth in circumstance and matter. The which I humbly beseech you to accept in part of paiment of the infinite debt in which I acknowledge myselfe bounden unto you for your singular favours and sundrie good turnes shewed to me at my late being in England, &c.'
The conclusion of this poem commemorates, as we have seen, Spenser's enduring affection for that Rosalind who so many years before had turned away her ears from his suit. It must have been some twelve months after those lines were penned, that the writer conceived an ardent attachment for one Elizabeth. The active research of Dr. Grosart has discovered that this lady belonged to the Boyle family—a family already of importance and destined to be famous. The family seat was at Kilcoran, near Youghal, and so we understand Spenser's singing of 'The sea that neighbours to her near.' Thus she lived in the same county with her poet. The whole course of the wooing and the winning is portrayed in the Amoretti or Sonnets and the Epithalamium. It may be gathered from these biographically and otherwise interesting pieces, that it was at the close of the year 1592 that the poet was made a captive of that beauty he so fondly describes. The first three sonnets would seem to have been written in that year. The fourth celebrates the beginning of the year 1593—the beginning according to our modern way of reckoning. All through that year 1593 the lover sighed, beseeched, adored, despaired, prayed again. Fifty-eight sonnets chronicle the various hopes and fears of that year. The object of his passion remained as steel and flint, while he wept and wailed and pleaded. His life was a long torment.
In vaine I seeke and sew to her for grace
And doe myne humbled hart before her poure;
The whiles her foot she in my necke doth place
And tread my life downe in the lowly floure.
In Lent she is his 'sweet saynt,' and he vows to find some fit service for her.
Her temple fayre is built within my mind
In which her glorious image placed is.
But all his devotion profited nothing, and he thinks it were better 'at once to die.' He marvels at her cruelty. He cannot address himself to further composition of his great poem. The accomplishment of that great work were
Sufficient werke for one man's simple head,
All were it, as the rest, but rudely writ.
How then should I, without another wit,
Thinck ever to endure so tedious toyle?
Sith that this one is tost with troublous fit
Of a proud love that doth my spirit spoyle.
He falls ill in his body too. When the anniversary of his being carried into captivity comes round, he declares, as has already been quoted, that the year just elapsed has appeared longer than all the forty years of his life that had preceded it (sonnet 60). In the beginning of the year 1594,
After long stormes and tempests sad assay
Which hardly I endured hertofore
In dread of death and daungerous dismay
With which my silly bark was tossed sore,
he did 'at length descry the happy shore.' The heart of his mistress softened towards him. The last twenty- five sonnets are for the most part the songs of a lover accepted and happy. It would seem that by this time he had completed three more books of the Faerie Queene, and he asks leave in sonnet 70,