[* Deface, disparage, despise.]

XII.

When these sad sights were overpast and gone,
My spright was greatly moved in her rest,
With inward ruth and deare affection,
To see so great things by so small distrest. 
Thenceforth I gan in my engrieved brest
To scorne all difference of great and small,
Sith that the greatest often are opprest,
And unawares doe into daunger fall. 
And ye, that read these ruines tragicall,
Learne, by their losse, to love the low degree;
And if that Fortune chaunce you up to call
To honours seat, forget not what you be: 
  For he that of himselfe is most secure
  Shall finde his state most fickle and unsure.

* * * * *

THE

VISIONS OF BELLAY.*

[* Eleven of these Visions of Bellay (all except the 6th, 8th, 13th, and 14th) differ only by a few changes necessary for rhyme from blank-verse translations found in Van der Noodt’s Theatre of Worldlings, printed in 1569; and the six first of the Visions of Petrarch (here said to have been “formerly translated”) occur almost word for word in the same publication, where the authorship appears to be claimed by one Theodore Roest.  The Complaints were collected, not by Spenser, but by Ponsonby, his bookseller, and he may have erred in ascribing these Visions to our poet.  C.]

I.

It was the time when rest, soft sliding downe
From heavens hight into mens heavy eyes,
In the forgetfulnes of sleepe doth drowne
The carefull thoughts of mortall miseries. 
Then did a ghost before mine eyes appeare,
On that great rivers banck that runnes by Rome;
Which, calling me by name, bad me to reare
My lookes to heaven whence all good gifts do come,
And crying lowd, “Loe! now beholde,” quoth hee,
“What under this great temple placed is: 
Lo, all is nought but flying vanitee!”
So I, that know this worlds inconstancies,
  Sith onely God surmounts all times decay,
  In God alone my confidence do stay.

II.

On high hills top I saw a stately frame,
An hundred cubits high by iust assize*,
With hundreth pillours fronting faire the same,
All wrought with diamond after Dorick wize. 
Nor brick nor marble was the wall in view,
But shining christall, which from top to base
Out of her womb a thousand rayons** threw
On hundred steps of Afrike golds enchase.@
Golde was the parget,$ and the seeling bright
Did shine all scaly with great plates of golde;
The floore of iasp and emeraude was dight.%
O worlds vainesse!  Whiles thus I did behold,
  An earthquake shooke the hill from lowest seat,
  And overthrew this frame with ruine great.