His style is injured by the artistic falsehood of producing antique
effects in the midst of modern feeling.[54] It was scarcely more
justifiable, for instance, in Spenser's time than it would be in ours to
use _glitterand_ for _glittering_; or to return to a large use of
alliteration, three, four, sometimes even five words in the same line
beginning with the same consonant sound. Everything should look like what
it is: prose or verse should be written in the language of its own era.
No doubt the wide-spreading roots of poetry gather to it more variety of
expression than prose can employ; and the very nature of verse will make
it free of times and seasons, harmonizing many opposites. Hence, through
its mediation, without discord, many fine old words, by the loss of which
the language has grown poorer and feebler, might be honourably enticed to
return even into our prose. But nothing ought to be brought back
_because_ it is old. That it is out of use is a presumptive argument that
it ought to remain out of use: good reasons must be at hand to support
its reappearance. I must not, however, enlarge upon this wide-reaching
question; for of the two portions of Spenser's verse which I shall quote,
one of them is not at all, the other not so much as his great poem,
affected with this whim.

The first I give is a sonnet, one of eighty-eight which he wrote to his
wife before their marriage. Apparently disappointed in early youth, he
did not fall in love again,--at least there is no sign of it that I
know,--till he was middle-aged. But then--woman was never more grandly
wooed than was his Elizabeth. I know of no marriage-present worthy to be
compared with the Epithalamion which he gave her "in lieu of many
ornaments,"--one of the most stately, melodious, and tender poems in the
world, I fully believe.

But now for the sonnet--the sixty-eighth of the _Amoretti_:

Most glorious Lord of Life! that, on this day,
Didst make thy triumph over death and sin,
And having harrowed hell, didst bring away
Captivity thence captive, us to win:
This joyous day, dear Lord, with joy begin;
And grant that we, for whom thou diddest die,
Being with thy dear blood clean washed from sin,
May live for ever in felicity!
And that thy love we weighing worthily,
May likewise love thee for the same again;
And for thy sake, that all like dear didst buy,
With love may one another entertain.
So let us love, dear love, like as we