Amoretti LXXIX: Men Call you Fair

By Edmund Spenser 1552–1599 Edmund Spenser

Men call you fair, and you do credit it,

For that your self ye daily such do see:

But the true fair, that is the gentle wit,

And vertuous mind, is much more prais'd of me.

For all the rest, how ever fair it be,

Shall turn to naught and lose that glorious hue:

But only that is permanent and free

From frail corruption, that doth flesh ensue.

That is true beauty: that doth argue you

To be divine, and born of heavenly seed:

Deriv'd from that fair Spirit, from whom all true

And perfect beauty did at first proceed.

He only fair, and what he fair hath made,

All other fair, like flowers untimely fade.

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 . . .

Continue reading this biography