Upon Spenser's Faerie Queene
by Sir Walter Raleigh

English poet. His most famous poems include an 'Epitaph of Sir Philip Sidney', 'Even Such is Time' and the sonnets 'Methought I Saw the Grave Where Laura Lay' which prefaced Spenser's Faerie Queene, and 'Sir Walter Ralegh to His Son'. The standard edition of his Poems was produced by A. Latham in 1951. His prose 'Report of the Truth of the Fight about the Isles of Açores' (1591) inspired Tennyson's poem 'The Revenge'. Other notable prose works are The Discoverie of Guiana (1596) and The History of the World (1614).

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Upon Spenser's Faerie Queene
by Sir Walter Raleigh

Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay,
Within that temple where the vestal flame
Was wont to burn; and passing by that way,
To see that buried dust of living fame,
Whose tomb fair Love and fairer Virtue kept,
All suddenly I saw the Faery Queen;
At whose approach the soul of Petrarch wept;
And from thenceforth those Graces were not seen,
For they this Queen attended; in whose stead
Oblivion laid him down on Laura's hearse:
Hereat the hardest stones were seen to bleed,
And groans of buried ghosts the heavens did pierce, -
Where Homer's sprite did tremble all for grief,
And cursed th' access of that celestial thief.

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Upon Spenser's Faerie Queene by Sir Walter Raleigh