Iambicum Trimetrum

Though “Iambicum Trimetrum” could be described as an elegy for love lost, the speaker is less directly interested in his object of affection than he is in his power to speak of that affection. Unlike other love poems, he does not address his beloved directly but speaks to a messenger who is a “witness” to his “unhappy state” (Line 1).

He speaks to the “witness” in the imperative tense, as though directing the muse to state in verse what the speaker might not have been able to say in life, thus making the poem “thy fast flying / Thought” (Lines 2-3). The speaker deploys the poem both to convey his suffering and to carry his messages of unyielding adoration. He speaks to his beloved “wheresoever she be” (Line 3), thus relying on the power of his message to find her. Within this poem, Spenser might have been conveying his sense that literature has the power to reach any audience, regardless of how distant the listener is in space or even time.