Time & Brevity

The Visions of Bellay: X

by Joachim du Bellay 1522–1560

Edmund Spenser (Complaints, 1591) · From The Visions of Bellay (Songe)

Time & Brevity

Hard by a rivers side a virgin faire,
Folding her armes to heaven with thousand throbs,
And outraging her cheekes and golden haire,
To falling rivers sound thus tun’d her sobs.
“Where is,” quoth she, “this whilom honoured face?
Where the great glorie and the auncient praise,
In which all worlds felicitie had place,
When gods and men my honour up did raise?
Suffisd’ it not that civill warres me made
The whole worlds spoile, but that this Hydra new,
Of hundred Hercules to be assaide,
With seven heads, budding monstrous crimes anew,
So many Neroes and Caligulaes
Out of these crooked shores must dayly rayse?”

MLA

Bellay, Joachim du. “The Visions of Bellay: X.” Translated by Edmund Spenser. Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/du-bellay/41/.

Chicago

Bellay, Joachim du. “The Visions of Bellay: X.” Translated by Edmund Spenser. Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/du-bellay/41/.

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