Companion Pieces

The Faerie Queene, Bk III, canto iii, stanza 50
as an Onegin sonnet

'The end is not,' old Merlin stuttered
(and the old fraud seemed quite unnerved),
If he saw ghosts, yet none he uttered,
But groaned and veered about and swerved,
As if to say 'Tudor succession
- in confidential confession -
Has flitted through the stable door;
It's Stuarts now, then Civil War.'
Well, Britomartya then, and Nursey
Recoiled back, as well they might
At such a startling sort of sight,
But Merlin, straightening out his Jersey
Adjusted to his former mien
As if unmoved by any scene.


Eugene Onegin, chapter 2, stanza 23
as a Spenserian stanza

Full neat as morning fitly doth she rise,
Lending my numbers (her lips warmly chaste)
The cleanness of her wheaten sapphire eyes,
The shining tressed bound, till Helga's waist
E'en braue Dan Petrarch would but haue defac'd:
As we in Virgil, or in Jeffrey read,
A goodliness, wherewith I once embrac'd,
Yet now must find it still most taedious grown,
So of the elder sister sing alone.