The phrase 'country lass' in this rapturous passage has
been taken to signify that she to whom it applied was
of mean origin; but it scarcely bears this
construction. Probably all that is meant is that her
family was not connected with the Court or the Court
circle. She was not high-born; but she was not low-
born. The final sonnets refer to some malicious
reports circulating about him, and to some local
separation between the sonneteer and his mistress.
This separation was certainly ended in the June
following his acceptance--that is, the June of 1594;
for in that month, on St. Barnabas' day, that is, on
the 11th, Spenser was married. This event Spenser
celebrates in the finest, the most perfect of all his
poems, in the most beautiful of all bridal songs--in
his _Epithalamion_. He had many a time sung for
others; he now bade the Muses crown their heads with
garlands and help him his own love's praises to
resound:--
So I unto my selfe alone will sing,
The woods shall to me answer, and my echo ring.
Then, with the sweetest melody and a refinement and
grace incomparable, he sings with a most happy heart of
various matters of the marriage day--of his love's
waking, of the merry music of the minstrels, of her
coming forth in all the pride of her visible
loveliness, of that 'inward beauty of her lively
spright' which no eyes can see, of her standing before
the altar, her sad eyes still fastened on the ground,
of the bringing her home, of the rising of the evening
star, and the fair face of the moon looking down on his
bliss not unfavourably, as he would hope.
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