Amoretti LXXIV: Most Happy Letters

By Edmund Spenser 1552–1599 Edmund Spenser

Most happy letters, fram'd by skilful trade,

With which that happy name was first design'd:

The which three times thrice happy hath me made,

With gifts of body, fortune, and of mind.

The first my being to me gave by kind,

From mother's womb deriv'd by due descent,

The second is my sovereign Queen most kind,

That honour and large richesse to me lent.

The third my love, my life's last ornament,

By whom my spirit out of dust was raised:

To speak her praise and glory excellent,

Of all alive most worthy to be praised.

Ye three Elizabeths for ever live,

That three such graces did unto me give.

Biography

To understand Edmund Spenser's place in the extraordinary literary renaissance that took place in England during the last two decades of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, it is helpful to begin with the remarks of the foremost literary critic of the age, Sir Philip Sidney. In The Defence of Poetry, (1595), written in the early 1580s, Sidney looked back on the history of English literature and sees little to admire. He mentions the . . .

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