Prothalamion - E. Spenser
Channel: The Great-Relatives Poetry Schoolbook
Date: 2021-05-30

53 Prothalamion
The fifty-third poem in the collection.  (* additional details below - after my un-schooled interpretation.)

I, mistakenly, found some rejection to the author, but that is not so.  It was simply the poet expressing a vision of a scene - from a distance.

*NOTES FROM THE BACK OF THE BOOK: "This "Spousal Verse" was written in honour of the Ladies Elizabeth and Katherine Somerset. Although beautiful, it is inferior to the "Epithalamion" on Spenser's own marriage,—omitted with great reluctance as not in harmony with modern manners.

feateously: elegantly.

shend: put out.

a noble peer: Robert Devereux, second Lord Essex, then at the height of his brief triumph after taking Cadiz: hence the allusion following to the Pillars of Hercules, placed near Gades by ancient legend.

Eliza: Elizabeth; twins of Jove: the stars Castor and Pollux; baldric: belt, the zodiac."