15Who now shall give unto me words and sound

6Equal unto this haughty enterprise?

7Or who shall lend me wings, with which from ground

8Lowly verse may loftily arise

9And lift itself unto the highest skies?

10More ample spirit than hitherto was wont

11Here needs me, whiles the famous ancestries

12Of my most dreaded Sovereign I recount,

13By which all earthly princes she doth far surmount.

214Ne under sun, that shines so wide and fair,

15Whence all that lives does borrow life and light,

16Lives aught that to her lineage may compare,

17Which though from earth it be derivèd right,

18Yet doth itself stretch forth to heavens height,

19And all the world with wonder overspread;

20A labor huge, exceeding far my might.

21How shall frail pen, with fear disparagèd,

22Conceive such sovereign glory and great bountihood?

323Argument worthy of Mœonian quill,

24Or rather worthy of great Phoebus' rote,

25Whereon the ruins of great Ossa hill,

26And triumphs of Phlegræan Jove he wrote,

27That all the Gods admired his lofty note.

28But if some relish of that heavenly lay

29His learnèd daughters would to me report,

30To deck my song withal I would assay,

31Thy name, ô sovereign Queen, to blazon far away.

432Thy name, ô sovereign Queen, thy realm and race,

33From this renownèd prince derivèd are,

34Who mightily upheld that royal mace

35Which now thou bear'st, to thee descended far

36From mighty kings and conquerors in war;

37Thy fathers and great-grandfathers of old,

38Whose noble deeds above the northern star

39Immortal fame forever hath enrolled,

40As in that old man's book they were in order told.

541The land, which warlike Britons now possess

42And therein have their mighty empire raised,

43In antique times was savage wilderness,

44Unpeopled, unmanured, unproved, unpraised,

45Ne was it island then, ne was it paysed

46Amid the ocean waves, ne was it sought

47Of merchants far for profits therein 'praised,

48But was all desolate, and of some thought

49By sea to have been from the Celtic mainland brought.