Iambicum Trimetrum: Spenser is adapting the rules of classical iambic trimeter, the most widely used meter in spoken passages of classical drama. Greek iambic trimeter consists of three dipodies, or pairs of feet, each pair composed of either two iambs or a spondee and an iamb (thus, x-‿-); substitutions of paired short syllables for a single long one are allowed in all but the final syllable of the line. The Latin adaptation of the iambic trimeter, often called the senarius, was widely used in Roman comedy and tragedy (with slightly different rules for each genre). The senarius is organized in feet rather than in metra and while the sixth foot is always an iamb, the preceding five feet often feature even greater freedom of substitution than was allowed in Greek trimeter. Spenser has chosen a form that allows considerable metrical latitude for his earliest surviving effort in quantitative versifying.

Although he claims that his practice here is ‘precisely perfecte for the feete’ and in other ways strictly regular, it has not seemed so to those readers who have attempted to scan his lines. Davison, presumably regarding the second line as defective and the third as hypermetrical, transposed ‘Thought’ in his reprinting of the poem in A Poetical Rhapsody; Attridge solved the same problem by treating ‘fluttring’ as a misprint for ‘fluttering’ and by scanning the fifth foot of the third line as a dactyl, a substitution allowable in the senarius. (A more elegant solution to the difficulty of the second line might be to emend by interpolating ‘for’ as the second word in the line.) Harvey is the most explicitly critical: at 5.59-76 below, he notes the inconsistent quantities of l. 2 (though not its defective character) and the hypermetrical character of l. 3, and chides Spenser for spelling that carelessly obscures what Harvey imagines to be his intended scansions, for the overuse of spondees, and for a reliance on initial trochaic substitutions that undermines the iambic character of the verse.

In Davison’s edition of 1602, the poem is arranged into three line strophes, which gives visual prominence to its triple rhetorical structures.

Harvey and Spenser argue below about the metrics of this poem, so the following scansion must be regarded as especially uncertain:

Harvey seems to have scanned lines 87/3 and 90/6 differently. His discussion at 5.59-65 suggests that he regards their scansion, with some disappointment, as

and

At 5.65-9 Harvey considers whether the last foot of the last line—‘merito’—should be scanned as an anapaest or a spondee, but he is disapprovingly confident that it cannot be iambic. For Harvey’s solution to the problem of the hypermetricality he attributes to 90/6, see 5.61-63 and 5.63n.

Ad Ornatissimum . . . reducat. etc.: ‘To that most accomplished man and, for a long time, the most eminently renowned, G.H., the Farewell [eutychein] of his Immerito, soon to make his voyage into Gaul.

‘Thus the bad poet salutes the great one; thus the not unfriendly one, his friend; thus the novice, the veteran, and wishes him, now returned after many years, favorable skies, more favorable than those he himself now enjoys. Behold, the god—if indeed he really be a god who tempts the unyielding to wickedness and brings sworn love to ruin—behold, the sea god has now given me clear signs and, gentle, smooths his seas, soon to be furrowed by a sail-bearing bow; Father Aeolus also puts by his furies and the huge gusts of the North Wind: thus all things suit my passage.

‘Only I am unsuited. For just now my mind, wounded by I know not what injury, is tossed by an uncertain sea, while Love, a powerful sailor, hauls here and there the powerless prow. Reason, that makes use of better counsel, and immortal honor have been split by Cupid’s fickle bow. We are anguished by this doubt, and shaken even while still at port. Oh, you who are now The Great Scorner of quiver-wearing Love (I pray that the gods not allow you that title unpunished) loosen these fetters and you will be, to me, The Great Apollo. A generous spirit, I know, drives you to the highest honors, and teaches the Poet to aspire more greatly.

‘How fickle is Love (and yet not all love is fickle). You therefore judge nothing equal to endless fame and, because of your sacred vision of such glory, you are accustomed to trample beneath you those other things that the senseless mob worships as gods—estates, friendships, city property, money, and whatever pleases the eyes, beauties, spectacles, lovers—all like dirt and the trumperies of sense. Surely this is a judgement worthy of my Harvey, worthy of the grand speaker and the noble heart; nor would the Stoic wisdom of the Ancients hesitate to sanctify this judgement with eternal bonds. Yet for all that, tastes differ.

‘It is said that the eloquent son of feeble Laertes, however much driven across the seas beneath unknown skies, and however long an exile in an ocean stormy with whirlpools, refused those born of heaven and the blessed couch of the gods in favor of the embrace of a tearful spouse: so mighty was his love, and his wife, in fact, even mightier than Love himself. And yet you mock it; such is your boast. Compared with an enshadowed vision of such great splendor and a reputation born of famous merits, you despise all those other things that the senseless mob worships as gods—estates, friendships, herds, property, money, and whatever pleases the eyes—beauties, spectacles, lovers—whatever is pleasing to the tongue and to the ears.

‘Indeed, fine as is your palate, taste is not wisdom: he who knows well how to be unwise, often bears the palm away from arrogant wisemen. The harsh crowd of the Wise now mocks Aristippus for tempering mild words to the purple-robed tyrant; Aristippus mocks the empty precepts of the Wise, whom the merest shadow of a passing gnat could cruelly torment. And whoever strives to please great heroes, strives to be unwise, for rewards flood the foolish. All told, whoever hopes to glorify his brow with plaited laurel and to please a favorable crowd, strives, crazed, for unwisdom and seeks the degraded praise of shameful folly. Father Ennius was said to have been the only wise man in a numberless crowd, yet he is praised for having poured out songs drenched in lunatic wine. Nor, if one may say so, would you, the greatest Cato of our age, really deserve the sacred name of reverend Poet, no matter how gloriously you sing or how noble the song, unless you would wish to make a fool of yourself, for the world is full of fools.

‘Yet a safe path remains in the midst of the whirlpool, for you should call wise only he who wishes to seem to the rest neither too foolish, nor too wise: here by a wave you would have drowned, and there been consumed by a fire. If you are wise, do not reject gushing delights outright, nor a mistress sluggish in responding to your vows, nor stolen gold: leave such pitiful scruples to the Curiuses and Fabriciuses, those pitiful men, once the grand honor of their age, but now the dishonor of our own. Don’t try too hard. Either extreme is worthy of reproach. The man who is thus prepared, if anyone is really prepared thus, call him alone wise, even if Socrates would resist doing so.

‘One power makes men pious, another makes them just, and still another makes their hearts both most prudent and most bold, but ‘he who mixes the useful and the pleasant wins on every count’. Long ago, the gods gave me the gift of the Pleasant, but they’ve never given me the Useful. Oh, if only they had made me, then, or even now, both Useful and Pleasant. If the gods didn’t so begrudge happiness to mortals, they could have granted me, at once, (since to the gods great things and small ones weigh equally) both the Pleasant and the Useful. But your good Fortune is so great, that it gives you, equally, whatever pleases and, freely, whatever is useful. Meanwhile, we, born under a harsh star, go off to seek at length our fortune -- through the inhospitable Caucasus, the rocky Pyrenees, and polluted Babylon. But if we shall not find there what we seek, having crossed a huge sea in endless wandering, we will seek it more remotely, in the midst of the flood, in the company of Ulysses. Thenceforth with weary steps we will attend the grieving Goddess, for whom, seeking for that noble thing which was stolen, leaving the world bereft. For it shames the not too unluckily gifted youth, languishing in shameful darkness and in the paternal lap, vainly to waste his flourishing years on worthless tasks and to pick out only empty stalks, when fruits were hoped for.

‘We will therefore set out at once (would anyone wish me good luck at the outset?); we will trudge with weary foot up the steep Alps. Who, meanwhile, who will send you little notes, spiced with British dews? and who will write the song goatish with love? Beneath the peak of the Oebalian mountain the unpracticed Muse in inexhaustible laments will bemoan her silence so protracted, and weeping will mourn sacred, silenced Helicon. Good Harvey -- who can be dear to all, and deservedly so, since he is sweeter than almost anyone else -- my Angel and my Gabriel, however much he is thronged by countless friends and pressed by delightful choirs of guardian spirits, will nevertheless often pine for an absent one, for Immerito, and will wish, “if only my Edmund were here, he who has written news and who has not kept silent about his own love affairs, and often prays, from his heart and with kind words, for my good fortune. May God eventually return him, etc.”’

Quàm . . .temnis: The poem as printed seems to preserve vestiges of competing drafts: the similarity of 147-51 and 163-8 suggests that they represent two different versions of the poem, one of which was to have been supplanted by the other. Another sign of lack of finish here is the poor continuity between the unusually short period at 145 (originally printed as part of the sentence beginning at 143, despite its syntactic independence) and the lines immediately following. We therefore surmise that the two versions of the poem here printed as one are

A:

[A generous spirit, I know, drives you to the highest honors, and teaches the Poet to aspire more greatly. You therefore judge nothing equal to endless fame and, because of your sacred vision of such glory, you [are accustomed to trample] beneath you those other things that the senseless mob worships as gods—estates, friendships, city property, money, and whatever pleases the eyes, beauties, spectacles, lovers—all like dirt and the trumperies of sense. Surely this is a judgement worthy of my Harvey, worthy of the grand speaker and the noble heart; nor would the Stoic wisdom of the Ancients hesitate to sanctify this judgement with eternal bonds. Yet for all that, tastes differ. Indeed, fine as is your palate, taste is not wisdom:, etc.]

and B:

[A generous spirit, I know, drives you to the highest honors, and teaches the Poet to aspire more greatly. How fickle is Love (and yet not all love is fickle). It is said that the eloquent son of feeble Laertes, however much driven across the seas beneath unknown skies, and however long an exile in an ocean stormy with whirlpools, refused those born of heaven and the blessed couch of the gods in favor of the embrace of a tearful spouse: so mighty was his love, and his wife, in fact, even mightier than Love himself. And yet you mock it; such is your boast. Compared with an enshadowed vision of such great splendor and a reputation born of famous merits, you despise all those other things that the senseless mob worships as gods—estates, friendships, herds, property, money, and whatever pleases the eyes—beauties, spectacles, lovers—whatever is pleasing to the tongue and to the ears. Indeed, fine as is your palate, taste is not wisdom:, etc.]

nostri sed dedecus æui: ‘But now the dishonor of our own age’: insinuating that a reputation for virtue no longer weighs more heavily than the ‘dishonor’ of frugality and poverty.