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"Rude rimes, the which a rustick nurse did weave In savage soyle, far from Parnasso Mount." Several other of the finest productions of his brain owe their birth to the "savage soyle" of Ireland; his descriptions of the country, his dialogue on Irish affairs, his "Amoretti" and "Colin Clout's come home again," belong confessedly to this category.
In the same year his reputation as a poet was vastly augmented by the publication of the first three books of the Faerie Queen, dedicated to Elizabeth. Having seen these ventures launched, S. returned to Kilcolman and wrote Colin Clout's come Home Again, one of the brightest and most vigorous of his poems, not, however, pub. until 1595.
Spenser has celebrated the return of his friend in the beautiful pastoral, "Colin Clout's come home again;" and in that, and various passages of his works, has made honorable mention of the highly poetic spirit which enabled the "Shepherd of the Ocean," as he is there denominated, to appreciate the merit of the "Fairy Queen," and led him to promote the publication of it by every means in his power.
In his poem, Colin Clout's Come Home Again, Spenser tells, in pastoral language, how "the shepherd of the ocean" persuaded him to go to London, where he presented him to the queen, under whose patronage the first three books of his great poem were printed, in 1590. A volume of minor poems, entitled Complaints, followed in 1591, and the three remaining books of the Faerie Queene in 1596.
His scientific works also included Colour Sense, Evolutionist at Large, Colin Clout's Calendar, and the Story of the Plants, and among his novels may be added Babylon, In all Shades, Philistia , The Devil's Die, and The British Barbarians .
And here the same cuckoo-note is repeated usque ad nauseam. We are told, that, to look upon her, "we should ween Some Angel she had been." "Sing, ye sweet Angels, Alleluya sing!" Finally, in "Colin Clout's come home again," the poet very dexterously evades the royal anger of Elizabeth, sure to be aroused by the preference of any beauty to her own.
It was now he wrote Colin Clout's come home again, from which I have already given you some quotations. He published also another book of poems and then he fell in love. He forgot his beautiful Rosalind, who had been so hard-hearted, and gave his love to another lady who in her turn loved him, and to whom he was happily married. This lady, too, he made famous in his verse.
There are many allusions to it also in the "Faëry Queen" and "Colin Clout's come home again"; and from these sources we propose to supply the name, the lineage, and residence of the happy fair. She was, undoubtedly, a person of rank and blood, residing in the poet's vicinage, and is so described in many of the Sonnets.
"His song was all a lamentable lay, Of great unkindness and of usage hard, Of Cynthia, the Lady of the Sea, Which from her presence faultless him debarred. And ever and anon with singults* rife, He cried out, to make his undersong, 'Ah! my love's Queen, and goddess of my life, Who shall me pity when thou doest me wrong?" *Sobs. "Colin Clout's come home again."
After Sidney's death appeared many elegies upon him, eight of which were printed at the end of Spenser's Colin Clout's Come Home Again, in 1595. That which Lamb quotes is by Matthew Roydon, Stanzas 15 to 18 and 26 and 27. The poem beginning "Silence augmenteth grief" is attributed to Brooke, chiefly on Lamb's authority, in Ward's English Poets. This is one stanza:
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