When Spenser Died

Thus spake my Lord of Essex on the day When, after woful stress, rare Spenser died: “Now give ye heed, my lieges! Ye shall lay My Spenser forth in splendor and in pride, With rich array of banners floating wide, And pomp of sable plumes, and scutcheons fair. Let kind Death yield him what stern Life denied! Then bear him to the abbey’s holy air, That he the sepulchre of buried kings may share!”

They laid him forth. Then up the mighty nave, Hung with rich tapestries that to and fro Waved softly in the scented air, all brave With dim, historic splendors, to the flow Of rolling music, tremulous and slow, With solemn liturgies and chantings clear, Through the vast arches echoing soft and low, They bore him onward to the silence drear, While kings and priests of song walked by his stately bier.

With tender hands the velvet pall they bore, Wrought with rich arabesques of silver sheen, Its silver fringes sweeping the dark floor Of the gray, pillared aisles they moved between; Nor paused until, with proud yet reverent mien, Where Chaucer slept they lowered him to his rest; Then gently dropped into the void unseen Odes, for spring flowers, to die upon his breast In fragrant, voiceless speech, that still their love confessed.

And, ere they left him to his long repose, Into the brooding dark each poet cast The pen his verse was writ with. Ah! who knows? The years are silent, and the hoary past; And Fame’s far trump hath no resounding blast Heralding name or state. Yet make ye room, O mighty shades, for one, the first and last And mightiest of ye all! In Spenser’s tomb Mayhap our Shakespeare’s pen yet lights the murky gloom!