today's poem

[angevin2]

Because it wouldn't be National Poetry Anything without a bit of Spenser.

Amoretti, Sonnet LXXV
Edmund SpenserOne day I wrote her name vpon the strand

Comments

[reynardo]

o dy in dust, but you shall liue by fame:
my verse your vertues rare shall eternize

It always confuses me when the U and V aren't used consistently. Is there a general rule they followed, or were things just not so formalised then?

[angevin2]

There isn't a general rule, no, what with the unstandardized spelling and all, except that initial V tends not to be printed as U. I suppose too that it has something to do with what the compositors have available.

[dancingwriter]

It seems to me I read somewhere awhile ago that because Spenser deliberately emulated Chaucer's spelling, modern editors leave it be (whereas they typically have no qualms about modernizing/standardizing, say, Sidney's spelling).

[ningloreth]

That is exactly what I thought!

[angevin2]

Her name was Elizabeth (Boyle, one of the same Boyles as produced the scientist Roger Boyle). Spenser does mention it elsewhere in the Amoretti.

[writerwench]

That is so sweet, so beautiful, and ultimately so ironic.