"A weary weed washed to and fro,
Drearily drenched in the ocean brine;
Soaring high, or sinking low,
Lashed along without will of mine;
Sport of the spoom of the surging sea,
Flung on the foam afar and near;
Mark my manifold mystery,
Growth and grace in their place appear.
"I bear round berries, gray and red,
Rootless and rover though I be;
My spangled leaves, when nicely spread,
Arboresce as a trunkless tree;
Corals curious coat me o'er
White and hard in apt array;
Mid the wild waves' rude uproar
Gracefully grow I, night and day.
"Hearts there are on the sounding shore,
(Something whispers soft to me,)
Restless and roaming for evermore,
Like this weary weed of the sea;
Bear they yet on each beating breast
The eternal Type of the wondrous whole,
Growth unfolding amidst unrest,
Grace informing the silent soul."
All nature becomes alive in the Spenserian description. Take, for example, the wonderful stanza which describes the music of the "Bower of Bliss:"—
"The joyous birds, shrouded in cheerful shade
Their notes unto the voice attemper'd sweet;
Th' angelical, soft, trembling voices made
To the instruments divine respondence meet;
The silver-sounding instruments did meet
With the bass murmur of the water's fall;
The water's fall, with difference discreet,
Now loud, now low, unto the winds did call;
The gentle warbling winds low answerëd to all."
Consider the splendid portrait of Belphœbe:—
"In her fair eyes two living lamps did flame,
Kindled above at the Heavenly Maker's light;
And darted fiery beams out of the same,
So passing piercing, and so wondrous bright,
They quite bereaved the rash beholder's sight;
In them the blinded god his lustful fire
To kindle oft essay'd but had no might,
For with dread majesty and awful ire
She broke his wanton darts and quenchëd base desire.
"Her ivory forehead, full of bounty brave,
Like a broad tablet did itself dispread,
For love his lofty triumphs to engrave,
And write the battles of his great godhead;
All good and honor might therein be read,
For there their dwelling was; and when she spake,
Sweet words, like dropping honey she did shed;
And, twixt the pearls and rubies softly brake
A silver Sound, that heavenly music seemed to make."