Shall we continue tomorrow?

I was watching Sense & Sensibility the other night, all by myself, and it occurred to me to finally search out the source of the beautiful poetry that Col. Brandon is reading to Marianne near the end of the movie. I've always meant to, you know, but never could keep the thought in my mind.

And so I did look it up. Is not the internet a fearful and wonderful thing? It didn't take long. I was rather surprised to learn that it comes from Spenser, but perhaps I shouldn't've been, since I've loved his work for years now. It's from the Faerie Queen, part of a longer section, and I just had to put the context in here. It reads rather like Job 38, and it's beautiful.

(I thought about modernising the spelling, but I decided it's better the way it was written.)

"Of things unseene how canst thou deeme aright,"
Then answered the righteous Artegall,
"Sith thou misdeem'st so much of things in sight?
What though the sea with waves continuall
Doe eate the earth, it is no more at all;
Ne is the earth the lesse, or loseth ought,
For whatsoever from one place doth fall
Is with the tide unto another brought:
For there is nothing lost, that may be found if sought. -

"Likewise the earth is not augmented more
By all that dying into it doe fade;
For of the earth they formed were of yore:
How ever gay their blossome or their blade
Doe flourish now, they into dust shall vade.
What wrong then is it, if that when they die
They turne to that whereof they first were made?
All in the powre of their great Maker lie:
All creatures must obey the voice of the Most Hie. -

"They live, they die, like as he doth ordaine,
Ne ever any asketh reason why.
The hils doe not the lowly dales disdaine,
The dales doe not the lofty hils envy.
He maketh Kings to sit in soverainty;
He maketh subjects to their powre obey;
He pulleth downe, he setteth up on hy;
He gives to this, from that he takes away,
For all we have is his: what he list doe, he may. -

"What ever thing is done by him is donne,
Ne any may his mighty will withstand;
Ne any may his soveraine power shonne,
Ne loose that he hath bound with stedfast band.
In vaine therefore doest thou now take in hand
To call to count, or weigh his workes anew,
Whose counsels depth thou canst not understand;
Sith of things subject to thy daily vew
Thou doest not know the causes, nor their courses dew. -

"For take thy ballaunce, if thou be so wise,
And weigh the winde that under heaven doth blow;
Or weigh the light that in the East doth rise;
Or weigh the thought that from mans mind doth flow:
But if the weight of these thou canst not show,
Weigh but one word which from thy lips doth fall:
For how canst thou those greater secrets know,
That doest not know the least thing of them all?
Ill can he rule the great that cannot reach the small."

Edmund Spenser
The Faerie Queene, Canto II, XXXIX - XLIII