The Poetical Works of - OUDL Home

lxvi INTRODUCTION
Certain combinations of consonants, indeed, are associated in his mind
with definite feelings or conceptions, and he will carry their use through
several lines, sometimes through a whole stanza Particularly effective is
his alliteration upon s and / to convey a sense of peace, wherein ' the senses
hilled are in slumber of delight The argument of Despair is rendered
almost irresistible by the music in which it is phrased
Is not short paine well borne, that brings long ease,
And layes the soule to sleepe in quiet graue ?
Sleepe after toyle, port after stormie seas,
Ease after warre, death after life does greatly please (I IX 40 )
And so of Arthur, dreaming of the faerie queene
Whiles euery sence the humour sweet embavd,
And slombnng soft my hart did steale away,
Me seemed, by my side a royall Mayd
Her daintie limbes full softly down did lav (1 ix 13 )1
It will be noticed that in all these passages the effect of the alliteration
is strengthened by the use of the alliterative letter in the middle and end
as well as at the beginning of the words
But apart from these special uses, assonance and alliteration run through
all his verse as an integral part of its melody, a kind of sweet undertone,
blending with the regular rise and fall of the verse and enhancing its
rhythmical appeal, so as to form a total effect of indefinable grace and
beauty
The peculiar dangers and temptations of such a style are obvious, and
Spenser did not escape them Though his finest music is wedded to his
noblest imaginings, he could convey, in music of a kind, any idea, however
trivial, and it was not always worth the carriage In such moments he
parodies his poetic self , the inspiration is gone , and those devices which
are the natural and inevitable expression of his mode of thought seem
little better than the threadbare artifice of a cunning metrical trickster
He fills out the rhythmical structure of his stanza with words and phrases
that add nothing to his picture, and gives whole lines of comment that
is trite and commonplace His characteristic manner has the exuberance
of a garden set in rich and fruitful soil, and it needs a careful tending,
for even its choicest flowers may put on such luxuriant growth that they
wellnigh choke each other, and if weeds chance to take root there they
will grow apace Spenser never learnt the art to prune, he was not over
careful to weed And his verse though it has a vigour of its own, is seldom
rapid ; it is the counterpart of that brooding contemplative mood in
which he looked habitually at life Its sustaining principle was a slow
circling movement that continually returned upon itself Wordsworth's
1 Cf also II vi 3,IIv 30, 32, III xII I