Time itself becomes more
noble when so measured; we never knew before of how precious a commodity
we had the wasting. Who would prefer the plain time of day to this?
"Now when Aldebaran was mounted high
Above the starry Cassiopeia's chair";
or this?
"By this the northern wagoner had set
His seven-fold team behind the steadfast star
That was in ocean's waves yet never wet,
But firm is fixt and sendeth light from far
To all that in the wide deep wandering are";
or this?
"At last the golden oriental gate
Of greatest heaven gan to open fair,
And Phoebus, fresh as bridegroom to his mate,
Came dancing forth, shaking his dewy hair
And hurls his glistening beams through dewy air."
The generous indefiniteness, which treats an hour more or less as of no
account, is in keeping with that sense of endless leisures which it is
one chief merit of the poem to suggest. But Spenser's dilatation extends
to thoughts as well as to phrases and images. He does not love the
concise. Yet his dilatation is not mere distension, but the expansion of
natural growth in the rich soil of his own mind, wherein the merest stick
of a verse puts forth leaves and blossoms. Here is one of his, suggested
by Homer:[308]
"Upon the top of all his lofty crest
A bunch of hairs discolored diversly,
With sprinkled pearl and gold full richly drest,
Did shake, and seemed to dance for jollity;
Like to an almond-tree mounted high
On top of green Selinus all alone
With blossoms brave bedecked daintily,
Whose tender locks do tremble every one
At every little breath that under heaven is blown.
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