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“Me therefore thus the cruell fiends of hell,
Girt with long snakes and thousand yron chaynes,
Through doome of that their cruell iudge compell,
With bitter torture and impatient paines,
Cause of my death and iust complaint to tell.
For thou art he whom my poore ghost complaines
To be the author of her ill unwares,
That careles hear’st my intollerable cares.

“Them therefore as bequeathing to the winde,
I now depart, returning to thee never,
And leave this lamentable plaint behinde.
But doo thou haunt the soft downe-rolling river,
And wilde greene woods and fruitful pastures minde,
And let the flitting aire my vaine words sever.”
Thus having said, he heavily departed
With piteous crie that anie would have smarted.

Now, when the sloathfull fit of lifes sweete rest
Had left the heavie Shepheard, wondrous cares
His inly grieved minde full sore opprest;
That balefull sorrow he no longer beares
For that Gnats death, which deeply was imprest,
But bends what ever power his aged yeares
Him lent, yet being such as through their might
He lately slue his dreadfull foe in fight.

By that same river lurking under greene,
Eftsoones* he gins to fashion forth a place,
And, squaring it in compasse well beseene**,
There plotteth out a tombe by measured space:
His yron-headed spade tho making cleene,
To dig up sods out of the flowrie grasse,
His worke he shortly to good purpose brought,
Like as he had conceiv’d it in his thought.
[* Eftsoones, immediately.]
[** Well beseene, seemly.]

An heape of earth he hoorded up on hie,
Enclosing it with banks on everie side,
And thereupon did raise full busily
A little mount, of greene turffs edifide*;
And on the top of all, that passers by
Might it behold, the toomb he did provide
Of smoothest marble stone in order set,
That never might his luckie scape forget.
[* Edifide, built.]

And round about he taught sweete flowres to growe;
The Rose, engrained in pure scarlet die;
The Lilly fresh, and Violet belowe;
The Marigolde, and cherefull Rosemarie;
The Spartan Mirtle, whence sweet gumb does flowe;
The purple Hyacinths, and fresh Costmarie,
And Saffron, sought for in Cilician soyle,
And Lawrell, th’ornament of Phoebus toyle:

Fresh Rhododaphne, and the Sabine flowre*,
Matching the wealth of th’auncient Frankincence;
And pallid Yvie, building his owne bowre;
And Box, yet mindfull of his olde offence;
Red Amaranthus, lucklesse paramour;
Oxeye still greene, and bitter Patience;
Ne wants there pale Narcisse, that, in a well
Seeing his beautie, in love with it fell.
[* Sabine flowre, a kind of juniper, the savine.]

And whatsoever other flowre of worth,
And whatso other hearb of lovely hew
The ioyous Spring out of the ground brings forth,
To cloath her selfe in colours fresh and new,
He planted there, and reard a mount of earth,
In whose high front was writ as doth ensue:

To thee, small Gnat, in lieu of his life saved,
The Shepheard hath thy deaths record engraved.

FOOTNOTES:

VIRGILS GNAT. This is a very skilful elaboration of the Culex, a poem attributed, without reason, to Virgil. The original, which is crabbed and pedantic, where it is not unintelligible from corruption, is here rendered with sufficient fidelity to the sense, but with such perspicuity, elegance, and sweetness, as to make Spenser’s performance too good a poem to be called a translation. C.