A Shakespearean proficiency in meter and rhetoric may to F L Light be ascribed. Nearly forty of his dramas are now available on Amazon, and twenty have been produced for Audible. His Gouldium is a series of twenty four dramas on the life and times of Jay Gould which he followed with six plays on Henry Clay Frick. The whole first book of his translation of The Iliad was published serially in Sonnetto Poesia. He has also appeared in Classical Outlook and The Raintown Review. Most of his thirty five books of couplets are on economics, such as Shakespeare Versus Keynes and Upwards to Emptiness the State Expands.

This scene (from a work in progress) occurs after the Battle of Glenmalure in County Wicklow, Ireland, where the English suffered a strong defeat. Edmund Spenser was secretary to Lord Grey, the English general at that battle. Raleigh and Spenser were later to become neighbors in Munster. Spenser had vexed Queen Elizabeth when he sought to dissuade her from marriage to the Duke of Alençon in The Shepherds’ Calendar.

Dublin Castle. Enter Sir Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser.

Raleigh: The Phoenix re-inflames herself to stand
Alive. Like her we can re-spring ourselves
And spread our advents forth. Re-mustered loyalty
Can be enlarged. In multiplied aggression
We may go forth erelong. They’ve not undone
Regeneration nor defeated fatherly
Revival of our cause. In myriad dominance
Amain we’ll march again and recommence
Composure in this land. Colonial neighborhoods
Of Perikles in fertilized profundity
May lettered conscientiousness assert.
This island of untutored emptiness
Oxonian literacy should accept
Or Cantabrigian dogma comprehend.
No feudal diffidence in reason nor
Despotic fairyland we Englishmen
Profess. The fairest possibilities
Of free endeavors should in husbandry
Not pall on Ireland.

Spenser: If recoveries
Refresh mortality for us, then all
Of Desmond’s Munster is dispropertied
And shall in efficacious forfeiture
To Lord Grey’s officers be meted out.

Raleigh: Incentive victory therefore may as
The greediest of attainments comfort us.
Now for the landed fortune of a lord
I’d follow my triumphant appetite
And trust emotional inclemency
For gain.

Spenser: A magnate’s animosity
For main extents you mean, in deep intent
On money.

Raleigh: Gainful joyance is no jape
For me. To my increaseful happiness,
Disposed like Croesus, I would magnify
My dirt.

Spenser: The fertile presence of your voice
In Munster would immortal lucre breed.
But the uncivilized delusions seen
Among the people there no peaceable
Facilities permit.

Raleigh: That profit is
The flow where life proceeds in grace the folk
Of Ireland will perceive. Your fluency,
In clarion inculcation, should be clear
Enough for that. Unguarded politics
Allow the Queen. You should political
Decorum to consultants in the court
Concede. On lucrative georgics, not
Upon her Majesty’s conclusiveness
In marriage, should your verses touch.

Spenser: Therefore
On spacious tilth for capital I should,
Sir Walter, songful eloquence enlarge?

Raleigh: I say proprietary sapience may
The most unsoftened pulchritude confirm
In poetry. The unmitigated tone
Of merchantry for English metre would
Be fit. Commercial intonations may
The strongest likelihood for music hold.
Singing your sagaciousness on seeds
For money, you would planters multiply
For Munster’s plenitude of various means.

Spenser: Now that convulsive wilderness consumedly
Has waned. Delinquent emptiness is left
In Munster, where abandoned decadence
Abides in death. Of starved disorder few
Survive. The naked likelihood of misery
Upon fulfilled oppression is avowed.
Now warfare to inflammable extremes,
Infesting Ireland, intervenient fire
On Desmond’s land inflicts.

Raleigh: But after war
The inflammation of vitality
We shall for savant juvenescence light
In Ireland. Verdant exploitation I’d
Advise and greenest diligence for growth.