Thanks to David Timson’s excellent narration of the audiobook and Kelly Cumbee’s class at the House of Humane Letters, I finished Edmund Spenser’s long, beautiful, and sometimes confusing poem today. I still don’t pretend to understand everything or get all the allusions to myths and such, but it is not one to read or listen to once and be done. Actually, Mr. E is doing Book I again, this time with the audiobook and understanding it much better, and I think I will have him and his younger brothers listen to most or all of it during their high school years. Spenser says in his letter to Sir Walter Raleigh that “the generall end therefore of all the booke is to fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline,” and it is indeed a book worthy to be read and contemplated by a young man growing in virtue. 🙂
Here is a favorite passage from Book V, in which the knight of Justice, Artegall, confronts a giant who thinks he can mete out justice better than God can. The spelling is Spenser’s – just swap v’s and u’s in several places and you should be okay. 😉 Those who have watched the Alan Rickman/Kate Winslet version of Sense and Sensibility will recognize a couple of these lines, quoted by Colonel Brandon to Marianne. ♥
Of things vnseene how canst thou deeme aright,
Then answered the righteous Artegall,
Sith thou misdeem’st so much of things in sight?
What though the sea with waues continuall
Doe eate the earth, it is no more at all:
Ne is the earth the less, or loseth ought,
For whatsoeuer from one place doth fall,
Is with the tide vnto an other brought:
For there is nothing lost, that may be found, if sought.Likewise the earth is not augmented more,
By all that dying into it doe fade.
For of the earth they formed were of yore,
How euer gay their blossome or their blade
Doe flourish now, they into dust shall vade.
What wrong then is it, if that when they die,
They turne to that, wereof they first were made?
All in the powre of their great Maker lie:
All creatures must obey the voice of the most hie.They liue, they die, like as he doth ordaine,
Ne euer any asketh reason why.
The hils doe not the lowly dales disdaine;
The dales doe not the lofty hils enuy.
He maketh Kings to sit in souerainty;
He maketh subiects to their powre obey;
He pulleth downe, he setteth vp on hy;
He giues to this, from that he takes away.
For all we haue is his: what he list doe, he may.What euer thing is done, by him is donne,
Ne any may his mighty will withstand;
Ne any may his soueraine power shonne,
Ne loose that he hath bound with stedfast band.
In vaine therefore doest thou now take in hand,
To call to count, or weigh his workes anew,
Whose counsels depth thou canst not vnderstand,
Sith of things subiect to thy daily vew
Thou doest not know the causes, not their courses dew.For take thy ballaunce, if thou be so wise,
And weigh the winde, that vnder heauen doth blow;
Or weigh the light, that in the East doth rise;
Or weigh the thought, that from mans mind doth flow.
But if the weight of these thou canst not show,
Weigh but one word which from thy lips doth fall.
For how canst thou those greater secrets know,
That doest not know the least thing of them all?
Ill can he rule the great, that cannot reach the small.
Current reads/audiobooks:
- Hubby: The Road to Serfdom (it’s really good!)
- Me: I came across In Praise of Good Bookstores on Goodreads, ordered it, and am about to start it. If it’s good, I’ll pass it along to my daughter and her fiancé who are in the process of starting their own bookstore for used books!
- Miss A: The Valley of Vision, her 20th birthday book. 🙂
- Mr. D: he and I are getting close to finishing Crime and Punishment.
- Mr. E: The Count of Monte Cristo is his big book this school year, and it will probably take him into summer break!
- Mr. L: he’s reading Freedom Train: The Story of Harriet Tubman, a book that made an impression on me as a girl.
- Mr. R: listening to The Jungle Book – I think he likes it despite the protests. 😉
