Who Rosalind really was no one knows.  She would never have been heard of had not Spenser taken her for his lady and made songs to her.  Spenser’s love for Rosalind was, however, more real than the fashionable poet’s passion.  He truly loved Rosalind, but she did not love him, and she soon married some one else.  Then all his joy in the summer and the sunshine was made dark.

    “Thus is my summer worn away and wasted,
    Thus is my harvest hastened all too rathe;*
    The ear that budded fair is burnt and blasted,
    And all my hoped gain it turned to scathe: 
        Of all the seed, that in my youth was sown,
        Was naught but brakes and brambles to be mown."**

    Early.
    *Shepherd’s Calendar, December.

At twenty-four life seemed ended, for “Love is a cureless sorrow."*

Shepherd’s Calendar, August.

    “Winter is come, that blows the baleful breath,
    And after Winter cometh timely death."*

    Shepherd’s Calendar, December.

And now, when he was feeling miserable, lonely, desolate an old college friend wrote to him begging him to come to London.  Spenser went, and through his friend he came to know Sir Philip Sidney, a true gentleman and a poet like himself, who in turn made him known to the great Earl of Leicester, Elizabeth’s favorite.

Spenser thought his heart had been broken and that his life was done.  But hearts do not break easily.  Life is not done at twenty-four.  After a time Spenser found that there was still much to live for.  The great Earl became the poet’s friend and patron, and gave him a post as secretary in his house.  For in those days no man could live by writing alone.  Poetry was still a graceful toy for the rich.  If a poor man wished to toy with it, he must either starve or find a rich friend to be his patron, to give him work to do that would leave him time to write also.  Such a friend Spenser found in Leicester.  In the Earl’s house the poor tailor’s son met many of the greatest men of the court of Queen Elizabeth.  On the Earl’s business he went to Ireland and to the Continent, seeing new sights, meeting the men and women of the great world, so that a new and brilliant life seemed opening for him.

Yet when, a few years later, Spenser published his first great poem, it did not tell of courts or courtiers, but of simple country sights and sounds.  This book is called the Shepherd’s Calendar, as it contains twelve poems, one for every month of the year.

In it Spenser sings of his fair lost lady Rosalind, and he himself appears under the name of Colin Clout.  The name is taken, as you will remember, from John Skelton’s poem.

Spenser called his poems Aeclogues, from a Greek word meaning Goatherds’ Tales, “Though indeed few goatherds have to do herein.”  He dedicated them to Sir Philip Sidney as “the president of noblesse and of chivalrie.”