| William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907. | | | | On Spenser’s “Faerie Queene” | | By Sir Walter Raleigh (1554?–1618) |
| | | METHOUGHT 1 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, | 5 |
| All suddenly I saw the Faerie Queene: | |
| At whose approach the soul of Petrarke 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. | 10 |
| Hereat the hardest stones were seen to bleed, | |
| And groans of buried ghosts the heavens did perse; | |
| Where Homer’s spright did tremble all for grief, | |
| And curst the access of that celestial thief. | |
| | | Note 1. This, perhaps, is the most famous and the best of all the prefatory poems to the Faerie Queene. [back] | | |
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