My Love Is Like To Ice
My
love
is
like
to
ice,
and
I
to
fire:
How
comes
it
then
that
this
her
cold
so
great
Is
not
dissolved
through
my
so
hot
desire,
But
harder
grows
the
more
I
her
entreat?
Or
how
comes
it
that
my
exceeding
heat
Is
not
allayed
by
her
heart-frozen
cold,
But
that
I
burn
much
more
in
boiling
sweat,
And
feel
my
flames
augmented
manifold?
What
more
miraculous
thing
may
be
told,
That
fire,
which
all
things
melts,
should
harden
ice,
And
ice,
which
is
congeal'd
with
senseless
cold,
Should
kindle
fire
by
wonderful
device?
Such
is
the
power
of
love
in
gentle
mind,
That
it
can
alter
all
the
course
of
kind.
Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser (born 1552/53, London, England—died January 13, 1599, London) English poet whose long allegorical poem The Faerie Queene is one of the greatest in the English language. It was written in what came to be called the Spenserian stanza. In 1598 rebels attacked and burned Kilcolman Castle, forcing Spenser and his family to flee to Cork. In December he returned to England, where he delivered a report on the Irish crisis at Whitehall on Christmas Eve. Three weeks later, on 13 January 1599, he died, perhaps of illness brought on by exhaustion. He was buried soon after in the south transept of Westminster Abbey in the Poets’ Corner.