Edmund Spenser

Sonnet 79 (Spenser)

'''Sonnet LXXIX'''
MEN call you fayre, and you doe credit it,
For that your selfe ye dayly such doe see:

Neoplatonic Beauty

Spenser divides beauty into two types: physical (what men see) and spiritual ("gentle wit" and "vertuous mind"). This is straight Neoplatonism—outer beauty is just shadow of inner truth.

but the trew fayre, that is the gentle wit,
and vertuous mind is much more praysd of me.
For all the rest, how euer 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.

Corruption Formula

"That doth flesh ensew"—ensew means "follow after." Physical corruption is the inevitable consequence of having a body. Only the mind escapes.

That is true beautie: that doth argue you
to be diuine and borne of heauenly seed:

Divine Genealogy

Her inner beauty proves divine ancestry. Spenser's claiming her virtue literally descends from God ("that fayre Spirit")—this is Renaissance love poetry as theology.

deriu'd from that fayre Spirit, from whom all true
and perfect beauty did at first proceed.
He only fayre, and what he fayre hath made,

Final Monopoly

Only God is truly beautiful ("He only fayre"), and only what God made beautiful stays beautiful. Everything else is counterfeit currency.

all other fayre lyke flowres vntymely fade.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Amoretti Project

CONTEXT This is Sonnet 79 from Spenser's *Amoretti* (1595), an 89-sonnet sequence tracking his courtship of Elizabeth Boyle. Unlike Petrarch's unconsummated longing or Sidney's doomed pursuit, Spenser's sequence ends in marriage (*Epithalamion*). He's writing Protestant love poetry—the beloved is attainable, marriage is sacred, physical beauty points to spiritual truth.

By Sonnet 79, he's deep into the engagement period, and this poem reads like he's coaching his fiancée through vanity. Notice the opening: "MEN call you fayre, and you doe credit it." He's not denying she's beautiful—he's saying she believes the compliments because she sees herself in the mirror daily. The tone is affectionate correction, not accusation.

The "trew fayre" he praises instead is her "gentle wit, / and vertuous mind." In Renaissance terms, "wit" means intelligence, judgment, mental acuity—not humor. He's arguing her mind is worth more praise than her face, but he's building to something bigger than a simple inner-beauty platitude.

Permanence vs. Decay

The poem's real argument is about what survives. Physical beauty, "how euer fayre it be," will "turne to nought and loose that glorious hew." "Hew" (hue) is color, complexion—the visible surface. It's temporary.

But spiritual beauty is "permanent and free / from frayle corruption, that doth flesh ensew." Watch that verb: "ensew" means "follow after" or "pursue." Corruption doesn't just happen to flesh—it *hunts* flesh. It's the inevitable consequence of materiality. Only the immaterial mind escapes.

This leads to his theological move: her inner beauty "doth argue you / to be diuine and borne of heauenly seed." In logic, to "argue" means to prove or demonstrate. Her virtue is evidence of divine origin. She's "deriu'd from that fayre Spirit"—derived, descended from God himself, the source of "all true / and perfect beauty."

The couplet clinches it: "He only fayre"—only God is essentially beautiful. Everything else beautiful is beautiful *because* God made it so ("what he fayre hath made"). All other beauty—physical, temporal, ungrounded in divine source—fades "lyke flowres vntymely fade." Untimely flowers die out of season, before their time. That's what happens to beauty not rooted in God: premature death.

Spenser's writing Christian Neoplatonism as courtship advice. Your face will fade, but your soul—that's permanent, that's divine, that's what makes you worth marrying.