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Spenser (EDMUND tions of the utmost)

EDMUND tions of the utmost subtlety and variation. At times the allegory is confusing to the lay reader, and the narrative seems inconsequent. It is not a poem that can be read continuously, but is rather for times and seasons. So read, one realizes the influence it has had on every great English poet since its publication.

After his great success, Spenser collected some earlier poems in a small anthology, wrote a charming pastoral called "Colin Clout's Come Home Againe," in which he told of his London experiences and paid tribute to Raleigh, and continued his epic. The second section of the poem, containing books IV-VI appeared in 1596. A fragment consisting of two cantos of Mutability was not printed until after his death; the design was only half finished.

Besides the works already named there are many shorter poems, chief among them two marriage hymns of enduring beauty, a sonnet sequence addressed to the lady whom he married in 1595, and four hymns in which he expressed in perfect verse the mystical and Platonic philosophy with which his name is inseparably linked. He died in London in 1599.