Amoretti LXXI: I joy to see how in your drawen work

By Edmund Spenser 1552–1599 Edmund Spenser

I joy to see how in your drawen work,

Your selfe unto the Bee ye doe compare;

And me unto the Spyder that doth lurke,

In close awayt to catch her unaware.

Right so your selfe were caught in cunning snare

Of a deare for, and thralled to his love:

In whose streight bands ye now captived are

So firmely, that ye never may remove.

But as your whole worke is woven all about,

With woodbynd flowers and fragrant Enlantine:

So sweet your prison you in time shall prove,

With many deare delights bedecked fyne,

And all thensforth eternall peace shall see

Betweene the Spyder and the gentle Bee.

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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