Experimenting with Edmund

I began this week's blogging by searching 'quirky poems' as I needed a little pick me up. Scrolling through poems such as 'The Mating of Dinosaurs' and 'Oatmeal' I came to the name 'Edmund Spenser' and went to find out more.

My immediate face-palm reaction came when I realised this was the Edmund Spenser who wrote 'The Faerie Queen', as referenced in Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'. He wrote many a long (even epic) poem, but I have found a few shorter ones, this being 'Iambicum Trimetrum', which is the metre of the poem, anciently used in Greek and Latin tragedies and comedies by a speaking character (i.e. not the Chorus). This was used because the literary circle in which Spenser was involved, which included Sydney, wished to rejuvenate English poetry with 'quantitative' rhyming and accentuating.

Unhappy verse, the witness of my unhappy state,
  Make thy self flutt'ring wings of thy fast flying
  Thought, and fly forth unto my love, wheresoever she be:
Whether lying restless in heavy bed, or else
  Sitting so cheerless at the cheerful board, or else
  Playing alone careless on her heavenly virginals.
If in bed, tell her, that my eyes can take no rest:
  If at board, tell her, that my mouth can eat no meat:
  If at her virginals, tell her, I can hear no mirth.
Asked why? say: waking love suffereth no sleep:
  Say that raging love doth appal the weak stomach:
  Say, that lamenting love marreth the musical.
Tell her, that her pleasures were wont to lull me asleep:
  Tell her, that her beauty was wont to feed mine eyes:
  Tell her, that her sweet tongue was wont to make me mirth.
Now do I nightly waste, wanting my kindly rest:
  Now do I daily starve, wanting my lively food:
  Now do I always die, wanting thy timely mirth.
And if I waste, who will bewail my heavy chance?
  And if I starve, who will record my cursed end?
  And if I die, who will say: "This was Immerito"?

First I will define a few words: 'board' here means table; 'virginals' were the equivalent of a small harpsichord; 'wont' means accustomed; 'immerito' translates from Latin as 'undeserved'. With that in mind let's do some analysis.

Spenser uses quite a few modifiers in this poem. Most nouns comes with an adjective, like 'unhappy verse', 'fast flying thought' 'heavy bed', etc. A few verbs come with a adverb, as in 'lying restless' (technically an adjective describing his 'love' but the juxtaposition works equally), 'playing alone', 'do i nightly', etc. This descriptive scene depicts his desperate state, helping the audience to comprehend the extent of his unhappiness.

The poem contains much parallelism. The repetition of 'unhappy' in the first line makes the poem not only a 'witness' but also a 'proof' of his state. The pattern of 'bed', 'board' and 'virginals' is repeated then transformed to the metonyms of 'sleep', food' and music. These are usually pleasures but the lack and transformation of good 'love' to a 'waking...raging...lamenting' one has spoiled them. This same triplet pattern is used again and again to emphasise that his senses are disused, along with the past tense in 'was wont'.

This repetition of the three ideas per three lines creates a climax each triplet, which then begins again when it recedes to the first idea of the three, rather like a wave; his emotions are reaching the brink of death and then returning to the problem to find that death is still the only answer, even though it is 'Immerito', which is capitalised and in Latin to make the narrator appear, ironically,  more worthy and heroic. The last triplet comes as three conditional and rhetorical questions, a typical device in love poetry as it highlights the absence of the narratee.

My favourite stylistic feature of the poem is the paranomasia of 'wont' and 'wanting', creating a contrast of what is normal for the narrator and how abnormal his situation is now. This is aided by the move from past to present, and then in the next triplet to the future, which is undecided and lacking in hope. Yet the poem does not fill one with utter despair, somehow. How? Because we know that the love is still alive (wheresoever she be) and also because the love appears so strong. Even if there is no hope for the narrator to be with his beloved, or even to continue existence, the poem's main focus is how great an affect love can have, and how sublime it is when things go according to plan. The hope is there for the reader rather than the narrator. At least, that's my take on it.

Have a good Halloween, dear reader. Perhaps next week I could theme my post around that...