:
He stands on tearmes of honourable minde,
Ne will be carried with the common winde
Of Courts inconstant mutabilitie,
Ne after everie tattling fable flie;
But heares and sees the follies of the rest,
And thereof gathers for himselfe the best.
He will not creepe, nor crouche with fained face,
But walkes upright with comely stedfast pace,
And unto all doth yeeld due curtesie;
But not with kissed hand belowe the knee,
As that same Apish crue is wont to doo:
For he disdaines himselfe t' embase theretoo.
He hates fowle leasings, and vile flatterie,
Two filthie blots in noble gentrie;
And lothefull idlenes he doth detest,
The canker worme of everie gentle brest.

Or lastly, when the bodie list to pause,
His minde unto the Muses he withdrawes:
Sweete Ladie Muses, Ladies of delight,
Delights of life, and ornaments of light!
With whom he close confers with wise discourse,
Of Natures workes, of heavens continuall course,
Of forreine lands, of people different,
Of kingdomes change, of divers gouvernment,
Of dreadfull battailes of renowned Knights;
With which he kindleth his ambitious sprights
To like desire and praise of noble fame,
The onely upshot whereto he doth ayme:
For all his minde on honour fixed is,
To which he levels all his purposis,
And in his Princes service spends his dayes,
Not so much for to gaine, or for to raise
Himselfe to high degree, as for his grace,
And in his liking to winne worthie place,
Through due deserts and comely carriage.

The fable also throws light on the way in which Spenser regarded the
religious parties, whose strife was becoming loud and threatening.
Spenser is often spoken of as a Puritan. He certainly had the Puritan
hatred of Rome; and in the Church system as it existed in England he saw
many instances of ignorance, laziness, and corruption; and he agreed
with the Puritans in denouncing them. His pictures of the "formal
priest," with his excuses for doing nothing, his new-fashioned and
improved substitutes for the ornate and also too lengthy ancient
service, and his general ideas of self-complacent comfort, has in it an
odd mixture of Roman Catholic irony with Puritan censure. Indeed, though
Spenser hated with an Englishman's hatred all that he considered Roman
superstition and tyranny, he had a sense of t