Amoretti LXXXIX: Lyke as the Culver on the barèd bough

By Edmund Spenser 1552–1599 Edmund Spenser

Lyke as the Culver on the barèd bough,

Sits mourning for the absence of her mate:

And in her songs sends many a wishfull vow,

For his returne that seemes to linger late,

So I alone now left disconsolate,

Mourne to my selfe the absence of my love:

And wandring here and there all desolate,

Seek with my playnts to match that mournful dove:

Ne joy of ought that under heaven doth hove,

Can comfort me, but her owne joyous sight:

Whose sweet aspèct both God and man can move,

In her unspotted pleasauns to delight.

Dark is my day, whyles her fayre light I mis,

And dead my life that wants such lively blis.

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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