Amoretti IV: "New yeare forth looking out of Janus gate"

By Edmund Spenser 1552–1599 Edmund Spenser

New yeare forth looking out of Janus gate,

Doth seeme to promise hope of new delight:

And bidding th’old Adieu, his pass�d date

Bids all old thoughts to die in dumpish spright

And calling forth out of sad Winters night,

Fresh love, that long hath slept in cheerlesse bower:

Wils him awake, and soone about him dight

His wanton wings and darts of deadly power.

For lusty spring now in his timely howre,

Is ready to come forth him to receive:

And warnes the Earth with divers colord flowre,

To decke hir selfe, and her faire mantle weave.

Then you faire flowre, in whom fresh youth doth raine,

Prepare your selfe new love to entertaine.

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