William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907.
On Spenser’s “Faerie Queene”Sir Walter Raleigh (1554?–1618)
M
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,
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.
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.