Amoretti XXIII: Penelope for her Ulisses sake

By Edmund Spenser 1552–1599 Edmund Spenser

Penelope for her Ulisses sake,

Deviz’d a Web her wooers to deceave:

In which the worke that she all day did make

The same at night she did again unreave:

Such subtile craft my Damzell doth conceave,

Th’ importune suit of my desire to shnone:

For all that I in many dayes doo weave,

In one short houre I find by her undonne.

So when I thinke to end that I begonne,

I must begin and never bring to end:

For with one looke she spils that long I sponne,

And with one word my whole years work doth rend.

Such labour like the Spyders web I fynd,

Whose fruitless worke is broken with least wynd.

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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