Spenser’s Cantos of Mutability (Week 3): The Trial of Change, Heard in Verse
- Feb 10
- 3 min read
Edmund Spenser was the greatest poet of his time, perhaps ever. Why?
He knew the English language and was master of its words and rhythm.
His theme and the message it carried was deep and spiritual.
Spenser knew Jesus and the Gospel and presented it in the Faerie Queene.
It is as alive today as it was 426 years ago when he died at age 47.
Is my life counting for Jesus as his was? Is yours? Live for Him who died for thee.
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Last week, we followed Mutability as she pressed her case: that all things beneath the heavens are subject to time. This week, Spenser draws us fully into Canto II, where her claim is no longer asserted but tried.
The poem itself announces the shift. Mutability no longer speaks as a mere observer of the world’s flux, but as a challenger of divine order:
“I am that same, that whilome did contest/With Jove himselfe for heaven’s sovereignty,/And did before the gods true proofe protest,/That all things were to change by destiny.”
The tone hardens. This is no lament over passing seasons. It is a demand for rule.
In response, a court is convened — and Nature appears, not as a fleeting figure, but as a queenly presence, grave and ordered, bearing the weight of the world she governs:
“Great Nature, ever young, yet full of eld,'Still moving, yet unmoved from her estate;/Unseen of any, yet of all beheld,/Thus sitting in her throne of regal state.”
Nature listens. She does not deny Mutability’s evidence. Indeed, Spenser allows her to confirm it.
Change is real. The world turns. Nothing created stands still. Even the heavens move in appointed courses.
Yet the poem turns on a single distinction: rule is not the same as end.
Mutability governs the process of things — their rising, flourishing, and decline — but she cannot govern their purpose. Nature herself acknowledges a boundary beyond which change may not pass:
“For all that moveth doth in change delight/But thenceforth all shall rest eternally.”
It is here that Spenser recalls the line we have been circling since Week 1:
“Then gin I think on that which Nature sayd,/Of that same time when no more change shall be.”
The promise does not cancel the present age; it frames it. Time reigns now, but not forever. Motion rules creation, but not its destiny.
Spenser Sees Who Really Rules
For Christian readers, this hope is not abstract. The poem gestures toward what the Gospel proclaims. Jesus Christ entered the realm of change — birth, suffering, death — yet rose beyond it. He stands as Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, Lord not only of history but of its fulfillment.
Spenser does not finish the poem because the ending he longs for cannot be written. The Cantos of Mutability close by pointing beyond poetry itself — toward rest, resurrection, and the stillness of eternity.
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JESUS SHALL REIGN
Jesus shall reign where’er the sun
Does his successive journeys run;
His kingdom stretch from shore to shore,
Till moons shall wax and wane no more.
The scepter well becomes His hands;
All Heav’n submits to His commands;
His justice shall avenge the poor,
And pride and rage prevail no more.
The saints shall flourish in His days,
Dressed in the robes of joy and praise;
Peace, like a river, from His throne
Shall flow to nations yet unknown.
Isaac Watts, The Psalms of David, 1719.
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