When SPENSER saw the fame was spredd so large
Through Faery Land of their renowned Queene,
Loth that his Muse should take so great a charge,
As in such haughty matter to be seene,

To seeme a shepeheard then he made his choice,
But Sidney heard him sing, and knew his voice----
So SPENSER was by Sidney's speaches wonne,
To blaze her fame, not fearing future harmes----
So SPENSER now, to his immortall prayse,
Hath wonne the laurell quite from all his feres.

VERSES TO THE AUTHOR.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR J. BELL, BOOKSELLER TO HIS
ROYAL HIGHNESS

THE PRINCE OF WALES.

THE FAERY QUEENE.

BOOK V.

Contayning

The Legend of Artegall, or of Justice.

I.

So oft as I with state of present time
The image of the antique world compare,
Whenas man's age was in his freshest prime,
And the first blossome of faire vertue bare,
Such oddes I finde twixt those and these which are,
As that, through long continuance of his course,
Me seemes the world is runne quite out of square
From the first point of his appointed sourse,
And being once amisse, growes daily wourse and
[wourse:
For from the Golden Age, that first was named,

II.

It's now at earst become a stonie one;

And men themselves, the which at first were framed
Of earthly mould, and form'd of flesh and bone,
Are now transformed into hardest stone,
Such as behind their backs (so backward bred)
Were throwne by Pyrrha and Deucalione;
And if then those may any worse be red,
They into that ere long will be degendered.

III.

Let none then blame me if, in discipline
Of vertue and of civill use's lore,

I do not forme them to the common line
Of present dayes, which are corrupted sore,
But to the antique use which was of yore,
When good was onely for itselfe desyred,
And all men sought their owne, and none no more;
When Iustice was not for most meed out-hyred,
But simple Truth did rayne, and was of all admyred.
IV.

For that which all men then did vertue call,

Is now cald vice; and that which vice was hight,
Is now hight vertue, and so us'd of all:

Right now is wrong, and wrong that was is right,
As all things else in time are chaunged quight:
Ne wonder, for the heavens revolution

Is wandred farre from where it first was pight,
And so doe make contrarie constitution

Of all this lower world toward his dissolution.

V.

For whoso list into the heavens looke,

And search the courses of the rowling spheares,
Shall find that from the point where they first tooke
Their setting forth, in these few thousand yeares
They all are wandred much; that plaine appeares :
For that same golden fleecy Ram, which bore
Phrixus and Helle from their stepdames feares,
Hath now forgot where he was plast of yore,
And shouldred hath the Bull which fayre Europa

bore:

VI.

And eke the Bull hath with his bow-bent horne
So hardly butted those two twinnes of Iove,
That they have crusht theCrab,and quight him borne
Into the great Nemean Lion's grove:

So now all range and do at random rove
Out of their proper places farre away,

And all this world with them amisse doe move,
And all this creatures from their course astray,
Till they arrive at their last ruinous decay.
VII.

Ne is that same great glorious lampe of light
That doth enlumine all these lesser fyres
In better case, ne keepes his course more right,
But is miscaried with the other spheres;
For since the terme of fourteen hundred yeres,
That learned Ptolomae his hight did take,
He is declyned from that marke of theirs
Nigh thirtie minutes to the southerne lake,
That makes me feare in time he will us quite forsake.
VIII.

And if to those Ægyptian wisards old

(Which in star-read were wont have best insight) Faith may be given, it is by them told,

That since the time they first tooke the sunnes hight,
Foure times his place he shifted hath in sight,
And twice hath risen where he now doth west,
And wested twise where he ought rise aright;
But most is Mars amisse of all the rest,

And next to him old Saturne, that was wont be best.