ccording to our modern
way of reckoning. All through that year 1593 the lover
sighed, beseeched, adored, despaired, prayed again.
Fifty-eight sonnets chronicle the various hopes and
fears of that year. The object of his passion remained
as steel and flint, while he wept and wailed and
pleaded. His life was a long torment.

In vaine I seeke and sew to her for grace
And doe myne humbled hart before her poure;
The whiles her foot she in my necke doth place
And tread my life downe in the lowly floure.

In Lent she is his 'sweet saynt,' and he vows to find
some fit service for her.

Her temple fayre is built within my mind
In which her glorious image placed is.

But all his devotion profited nothing, and he thinks it
were better 'at once to die.' He marvels at her
cruelty. He cannot address himself to further
composition of his great poem. The accomplishment of
that great work were

Sufficient werke for one man's simple head,
All were it, as the rest, but rudely writ.
How then should I, without another wit,
Thinck ever to endure so tedious toyle?
Sith that this one is tost with troublous fit
Of a proud love that doth my spirit spoyle.

He falls ill in his body too. When the anniversary of
his being carried into captivity comes round, he
declares, as has already been quoted, that the year
just elapsed has appeared longer than all the forty
years of his life that had preceded it (sonnet 60). In
the beginning of the year 1594,

After long stormes and tempests sad assay
Which hardly I endured hertofore
In dread of death and daungerous dismay
With which my silly bark was tossed sore,

he did 'at length descry the happy shore.' The heart
of his mistress softened towards him. The last twenty-
five sonnets are for the most part the songs of a lover
accepted and happy. It would seem that by this time he
had completed three more books of the _Faerie Queene_,
and he asks leave in sonnet 70,

In pleasant mew
To sport my Muse and sing my loves sweet praise,
The contemplation of whose heavenly hew
My spirit to an higher pitch doth raise.

Probably the Sixth Book was concluded in the first part
of the year 1594, just after his long wooing had been
crowned with success. In the tenth canto of that book
he introduces the lady of his love, and himself
'piping' unto her. In a rarely pleasant