7 - THE MUTABILITIE CANTOS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2009
Summary
From these kind turns and circulation
Seasons proceed and generation.
This makes the spring to yield us flowers,
And melts the clouds to gentle showers.
The summer thus matures all seeds
And ripens both the corn and weeds.
This brings on autumn, which recruits
Our old, spent store with new fresh fruits.
And the cold winters blustering season
Hath snow and storms for the same reason.
This temper and wise mixture breed
And bring forth every living seed.
And when their strength and substance spend
(For while they live, they drive and tend
Still to a change,) it takes them hence
And shifts their dress; and to our sense
Their course is over, as their birth:
And hid from us, they turn to earth.
But all this while the Prince of life
Sits without loss, or change, or strife:
Holding the reins, by which all move;
(And those his wisdom, power, love
And justice are;)
INTRODUCTION
The Mutabilitie Cantos
The ‘Two Cantos of Mutabilitie’, with a fragmentary third, were first published in 1609, ten years after Spenser's death, with the note that they ‘both for Forme and Matter, appeare to be parcell of some following Booke of the Faerie Queene, under the Legend of Constancie'’. No more is known about them than that. Even the division into cantos may not be by Spenser himself. The stanza form, the theme and the mode of these cantos all suggest that they are a continuation of the main poem, possibly the ‘core cantos’ of a seventh book, with as rich a mixture of philosophy, myth and allegory as the Garden of Adonis (3.vi) or Colin Clout's vision of the Graces (6.x).
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- Information
- The Faerie Queene: A Reader's Guide , pp. 170 - 177Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999