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Poems of Spenser
(1906)
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To the left, we show a copy of
Poems of Spenser, as illustrated in colour by Jessie M King and
published by T C & E C Jack (Edinburgh) in 1906. It shows the
original gilt-stamped purple cloth cover.
This edition of Poems of
Spenser also included an introduction by W B Yeats.
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To the left, we show the
Frontispiece depicting Edmund Spenser prepared by A S Hartrick.
On the right, we show the Vignette
Title
also prepared by A S Hartrick. |
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In his Introduction to Poems of Spenser, Yeats
provides a succinct biography for Spenser in addition to a critique of his body
of work. Yeats also provides an insight into his personal experience of
Spenser's work thus:
I have put into this book only those
passages from Spenser that I want to remember and carry about
with me. I have not tried to select what people call
characteristic passages, for that is, I think, the way to make a
dull book. One never really knows anybody's taste but one's own,
and if one likes anything sincerely one must be certain that
there are other people made out of the same earth to like it
too.
I have taken out of the 'Shepherds
Calender' only those parts which are about love or about old
age, and I have taken out of the 'Faerie Queen' passages about
shepherds and lovers, and fauns and satyrs, and a few
allegorical processions. I find that though I love symbolism,
which is often the only fitting speech for some mystery of
disembodied life, I am for the most part bored by allegory,
which is made, as Blake says, 'by the daughters of memory,' and
coldly, with no wizard frenzy.
The processions I have chosen are
either those, like the House of Mammon, that have enough ancient
mythology, always an implicit symbolism, or, like the Cave of
Despair, enough sheer passion to make one forget or forgive
their allegory, or else they are, like that vision of Scudamour,
so visionary, so full of a sort of ghostly midnight animation,
that one is persuaded that they had some strange purpose and did
truly appear in just that way to some mind worn out with war and
trouble. The vision of Scudamour is, I sometimes think, the
finest invention in Spenser. Until quite lately I knew nothing
of Spenser but the parts I had read as a boy. I did not know
that I had read so far as that vision, but year after year this
thought would rise up before me coming from I knew not where. I
would be alone perhaps in some old building, and I would think
suddenly 'out of that door might come a procession of strange
people doing mysterious things with tumult. They would walk over
the stone floor, then suddenly vanish, and everything would
become silent again'. One I saw what is called, I think, a Board
School continuation class play 'Hamlet'. There was no stage, but
they walked in procession into the midst of a large room full of
visitors and of their friends. When they were walking in, that
thought came to me again from I knew not where. I was alone in a
great church watching ghostly kings and queens setting out upon
their unearthly business.
It was only last summer, when I read
the Fourth Book of the 'Faerie Queen', that I found I had been
imagining over and over the enchanted persecution of Amoret.
I give too, in a section which I call
'Gardens of Delight', the good gardens of Adonis and the bad
gardens of Phædria and Acrasia, which are mythological and
symbolical, but not allegorical, and show, more particularly
those bad islands, his power of describing bodily happiness and
bodily beauty at its greatest. He seemed always to feel through
the eyes, imagining everything in pictures. Marlowe's 'Hero and
Leander' is more energetic in it s sensuality, more complicated
in it s intellectual energy than this languid story, which
pictures always a happiness that would perish if the desire to
which it offer so many roses lost it indolence and its softness.
There is no passion in the please he has set amid perilous seas,
for he would have us understand that there alone could the
warworn and the sea-worn man find dateless leisure and
unrepining peace.
The illustrations by King - highlighted by silver- and
gold-gilt and
rose accents - are gorgeous and capture the themes identified by Yeats in the
work of Spenser wonderfully.
Throughout the page that follows, we have shown images
from Poems of Spenser optimised for reproduction in 8 x 12" format. We consider those to be among the larger formats that allows the accurate reproduction of form, line and colour as prepared by King and published in the 1st Edition
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Epithalamion
And let them also
with them bring in hand
Another gay girland,
For my fayre love,
of lillyes and of roses,
Bound truelove wize
Code: JMK PS 1
8 x 12" Reproduction:
US$36
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Enchanted Trees
And, thinking of
those braunches greene to frame
A girlond for her
dainty forehead fit,
He pluckt a bough;
out of whose rifte there came
Smal drops of gory
bloud that trickled down the same
Code: JMK PS 2
8
x 12" Reproduction:
US$36
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Florimell and
Marinell
There they him laid
in easy couch well dight
Code: JMK PS 3
8
x 12" Reproduction:
US$36
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The House of Despair
About his neck a
hempen rope he weares
That with his
glittering armes does ill agree
Code: JMK PS 4
8
x 12" Reproduction:
US$48
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The House of
Friendship
And in the midst
thereof a pillar placed;
On which this
shield, of many sought in vaine,
The shield of Love
whose guerdon me hath graced,
Was hanged on high
with golden ribbands laced
Code: JMK PS 5
8
x 12" Reproduction:
US$48
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Mutabilitie
The sixth was
August, being rich array'd
In garment all of
gold down to the ground;
Yet rode he not, but
led a lovely Mayd
Forth by the lily
hand, the which was crown'd
With ears of corn,
and full her hand was found
Code: JMK PS 6
8
x 12" Reproduction:
US$36
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The Islands of
Phædra and Acrasia
And therein sat a
Lady fresh and fayre,
Making sweet solace
to herselfe alone:
Sometimes she song
as lowd as larke in ayre,
Sometimes she
laughed, as merry as Pope Jone
Code: JMK PS 7
8
x 12" Reproduction:
US$48
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Una among the Fauns
and Satyrs
And with green
branches strewing all the ground,
Do worship her as
Queen with olive girlond crown'd
Code: JMK PS 8
8 x 12" Reproduction:
US$48
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