poem men call you fayre | edmund spenser

Men Call You Fayre Poem By Edmund Spenser

Men Call You Fayre ( Sonnet 79 )

Men call you fayre, and you doe credit it,

For that your selfe ye dayly such doe see:

But the trew fayre, that is the gentle wit,

And vertuous mind, is much more praysd of me. For all the rest, how ever fayre it be,

Shall turne to nought and loose that glorious hew: But onely that is permanent and free

From frayle corruption, that doth flesh ensew.

That is true beautie: that doth argue you

To be divine and borne of heavenly seed:

Deriv'd from that fayre Spirit, from whom al true

And perfect beauty did at first proceed.

He onely fayre, and what he fayre hath made,

All other fayre lyke flowres untymely fade.

Glossary

Line 1. fayre fair, beautiful
Line 3. trew true, real, essential
Line 3. wit wisdom
Line 4. praysd praised
Line 6. hew hue, colour, complexion
Line 8. ensew ensue, happen afterwards; result
Line 11. deriv'd derived, born of
Line 11. that fayre spirit God, the Holy Spirit, divine beauty
Line 14. untymely untimely

Explanatory Notes

'Amoretti' is a series of eighty-eight sonnets by Spenser, that illustrates the course of his courtship with Elizabeth Boyle, the woman he later married. Amoretti is an Italian term meaning 'little loves', or 'little Cupids'. This sonnet sequence is not only a collection of 'little loves' but a carefully constructed series of glimpses into the world of fantasy.

In the sonnet 'Men Call You Fayre...', Spenser expresses his idea of true, everlasting beauty. He considers spiritual beauty far more important than physical beauty. A beautiful person or object will lose physical charm but true beauty of the spirit shall remain eternal. Such beauty shall be derived from Divine Beauty and hence remain permanent and everlasting. The beloved is not considered just simply 'flesh' but the poet considers the 'spiritual' being in her. It is this spiritual beauty that he would seek to worship because doing so would be worshipping the Divine Soul. That the sonnet emphasises spiritual and intellectual beauty in a woman rather than the physical is a strikingly different feature.

This sonnet varies from the standard English pattern found in Shakespeare and combines French and English verse traditions. Though it consists of three quatrains and a final couplet, notice the rhyme scheme which is abab, bcbc, cdcd, ee.