You know you're a celebrated poet when other poets carry your casket during your funeral. Oh, and they offer up pens and lines of verse along with their tears.

Spenser lived and wrote during the early years of the English Renaissance, and he heavily influenced other Renaissance writers. Milton alludes to him in much of his work, including his two most important works: "Lycidas" and Paradise Lost.

By day, he worked in various government posts in Ireland. But, ultimately, he sought a place at court through his poetry. What better way to try and do that than by courting the queen's favor?

He didn't receive a noble title, but he remains one of the most celebrated poets in English history. His influence lasted far beyond the reaches of the Renaissance. You can find him popping up in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison" during the Romantic period, and T.S. Eliot's modernist work, The Waste Land.

The Faerie Queene 

Okay, so we've mentioned this epic quite a bit because it's actually quite… epic. No, seriously, this is a tome that could be as daunting to finish as Finnegan's Wake. (Though, arguably for different reasons.)

Despite its length, it's technically unfinished. Fear not, you can still reap many of its rewards, no matter its inchoate state. In fact, in addition to being an allegory praising the good Queen Elizabeth, it is an examination of virtues.

This focus is meant to make the reader become a better person. But don't worry, it's not a boring tale at all. The Fairie Queene takes themes and values from Medieval literature and Arthurian legend to create a fantasy journey through magic lands. Merlin even makes an appearance. Whee.

"Epithalamion"

The title of this work is the Greek word for celebrating a couple on their wedding. Spenser wrote his "Epithalamion" in honor of his marriage to his second wife, Elizabeth Boyle.

It's an intricate poem that repeats key ending lines of each stanza with slight differences that shift the reader's perspective through the poem just a little—just like the changing of a day from morning to night. This works particularly well with the poem's content: it starts giddy and joyous in the morning-like hours, and grows more somber as the day meets its end.

Chew on This

The sonnet is one of the most famous poetry forms. Even though Spenser is best known for his epic, take a peek at why he's got one of these shorter forms named after him: the Spenserian sonnet.

Coleridge isn't the only author to riff on Spenser's bower of bliss. Shakespeare takes a stab at it much earlier in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Critics seem to be really interested in the geography of this play. Any ideas as to why it's so important to figure out if we actually see Titania's Bower?