Fierce wars and faithful loves shall moralize my song.

This line comes from Edmund Spenser’s epic romance The Faerie Queene, in the opening of Book I (the “Legend of Holiness”). Published in 1590 (with additional books in 1596), the poem was conceived as a grand moral and national epic for Elizabethan England, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth I. In the proem Spenser announces the scope and purpose of his poem: to recount chivalric battles and courtly love stories, but always with an explicitly ethical aim—using romance narrative to “moralize” (teach virtue). The line functions as a programmatic statement of the poem’s didactic ambitions.

Spenser signals that his subject matter—warfare and love—will not be treated merely for entertainment or heroic spectacle. “Fierce wars” evokes the martial trials of knights, while “faithful loves” points to the bonds of loyalty, chastity, and constancy central to romance. By saying these will “moralize” his song, Spenser frames poetry as ethical instruction: narrative becomes an instrument for shaping character and guiding readers toward virtue. The line encapsulates The Faerie Queene’s fusion of allegory and romance, where battles and passions are outward forms of inward moral struggle and spiritual discipline.