OR

[The event celebrated in the Prothalamion must have occurred some time after the return of Essex from Cadiz in mid-August, 1596. It would seem to have been a ceremonial visit of the two prospective brides to Essex House, not long before their wedding. They evidently proceeded in barges by the river, probably upstream with the tide from the court at Greenwich, accompanied in the latter part of their route by swarms of those smaller craft which then thronged the main highway of London.

In this poem Spenser has refined upon the stanza-form which he invented for the Epithalamion. He has brought it to virtual uniformity of structure by discarding most of those small diversities of detail between strophe and strophe which, in the earlier poem, mark his first invention. To the late Professor Palgrave this revised form seemed the more delightfully and

CALME was the day, and through the trembling ayre

Sweete breathing Zephyrus did softly play,

A gentle spirit, that lightly did delay Hot Titans beames, which then did glyster fayre:

When I, whom sullein care,
Through discontent of my long fruitlesse
stay

In princes court, and expectation vayne
Of idle hopes, which still doe fly away,

delicately cadenced. There will probably be those, however, for whom the frank irregularities of the first ode, more felt than distinctly observed, will have the greater charm, will seem not unlike those irregularities that enrich, without disturbing, the orderliness of certain great mediæval façades.

Unlike the stanza of the Faery Queen, these strophes have not found imitators, perhaps because few later poets have united fecundity and elaborateness of art so perfectly as Spenser. One may detect their influence upon Lycidas, but hardly more at large. Other posts of the time contented themselves with shorter or easier forms; and then came the bastard Pindaric ode, which for over a hundred years remained the type specially appropriated to larger lyric themes. In the later revivals' they were passed by.]

Against the brydale day, which is not long:

Sweete Themmes, runne softly, till I end my song.

There, in a meadow, by the rivers side,
A flocke of nymphes I chaunced to espy, 20
All lovely daughters of the flood thereby,
With goodly greenish locks all loose untyde,
As each had bene a bryde:

And each one had a little wicker basket,
Made of fine twigs entrayled curiously,
In which they gathered flowers to fill their
flasket;

And with fine fingers cropt full feateously
The tender stalkes on hye.

Of every sort, which in that meadow grew,
They gathered some; the violet pallid blew,
The little dazie, that at evening closes,
The virgin lillie, and the primrose trew,
With store of vermeil roses,

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To decke their bridegromes posies Against the brydale day, which was not long:

Sweete Themmes, runne softly, till I end my song.

With that I saw two swannes of goodly bewe

Come softly swimming downe along the lee;

Two fairer birds I yet did never see:

The snow which doth the top of Pindus

Nor Jove himselfe, when he a swan would be

For love of Leda, whiter did appear:
Yet Leda was, they say, as white as he,
Yet not so white as these, nor nothing neare:
So purely white they were,

That even the gentle streame, the which them bare,

Seem'd foule to them, and bad his billowes spare

To wet their silken feathers, least they might

Soyle their fayre plumes with water not so fayre,

And marre their beauties bright,
That shone as heavens light,

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Against their brydale day, which was not long:

Sweete Themmes, runne softly, till I end my song.

That to the sense did fragrant odours yeild, All which upon those goodly birds they threw,

And all the waves did strew,

That like old Peneus waters they did

seeme,

When downe along by pleasant Tempes shore,

Scattred with flowres, through Thessaly they streeme,

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That they appeare, through lillies plenteous store,

Like a brydes chamber flore.

Two of those nymphes, meane while, two garlands bound

Of freshest flowres which in that mead they found,

The which presenting all in trim array, Their snowie foreheads therewithall they

crownd,

Whil'st one did sing this lay,

Prepar'd against that day,