Edmund Spenser

The fields around Kilcolman Castle evergreen And here poet Spenser wrote his Faerie Queen A masterpiece from the sixteenth century And as a writer few as great as he. In Ireland by the British Monarch he was given a huge estate In Fermoy in County Cork and the renowned literary great There composed his great poem that still lives on today Time is the test of greatness many say. But in other ways Spenser left himself down His loyalty alone was to the Crown And as a humanitarian he will never rate As his feelings for the Irish people were bordering on hate. But the Irish rebels ran him out of Ireland And their hatred for him not hard to understand He had treated the Irish as an inferior race And Ireland for him became an unsafe place. At forty seven years he had written his last line On the year of his death at home in London in fifteen ninety nine He did not last that long beyond his prime One of the finest English writers of his time. The fields around Kilcolman Castle evergreen Where Edmund Spenser wrote his Faerie Queen Of his time he was a poetic great But as a humanitarian he doesn't even rate.