“To an archaicism which is inimitable because it is purely capricious, he was drawn at once by its reminiscent picturesqueness and by its musical possibilities. …he took advantage of the unsettled state of English in his day, not only to revive the obsolete, but to coin new words on old analogies, and to adapt both his spelling and his pronunciation to his desired effects of cadence and melody. …He cherished words which though still in use were rapidly passing out of fashion, and the sustained colouring and atmosphere of his style is thus given by a constant use of words which are found in Marlowe, Shakespeare, or Sidney, perhaps once or twice. …he was the first conscious inventor of a distinct poetic diction, which drew from ‘well-languaged’ Daniel a criticism of his ‘aged accents and untimely words,’ and from Ben Jonson the charge that ‘in affecting the ancients he writ no language.’ “ —E de Sincourt, introduction to The Oxford Spenser (1921)
"We left that tower with nothing but our lives."
"disavowal of my bad thoughts"
the feral word weathers
warfare & surf-ravage
hides in the stone staring
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