Spenser’s Cantos of Mutability (Week 4): Nature’s Sentence — Change is Judged, and Rest is Promised
- Feb 17
- 4 min read
As we come to the end of Spenser's great poem, we see:
The Gospel presented through six knights of action in the Faerie Queene.
Dramatized spiritual warfare between Truth and deception, Jesus Christ and His enemies.
A deep understanding of change in the Cantos of Mutability.
He opens to us a living story in which we can have a part.
All of this has drawn me closer to Jesus, and that is Spenser's greatest accomplishment.
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We have listened patiently as Mutability made her case. We have watched the trial unfold, with Nature herself presiding. Now, in the closing movement of Canto II, Spenser asks us to be still.
The judgment does not come with thunder or spectacle. It comes quietly — and decisively — in verse that weighs every word.
Nature begins by acknowledging what no honest reader can deny:
“For all that moveth doth in change delight.”
This single line gathers everything Mutability has argued.
Motion belongs to the created world. Growth, decay, succession, loss — these are not intrusions but conditions of life as we know it.
Nature does not rebuke Mutability for noticing change. She confirms it.
But she does not stop there.
The sentence turns, and with it the whole poem:
“But thenceforth all shall rest eternally.”
Here is the line that restrains Mutability — not by contradiction, but by limit. Change governs the present order, but it does not govern the final state.
Motion is real, but it is not endless. Time itself moves toward rest.
Nature continues, locating that rest beyond the realm of what we see:
“With Him that is the God of Sabbaoth hight:/O that great Sabbaoth God, grant me that Sabaoths sight!”
This is no abstract eternity. Spenser names it with biblical precision. The end of change is not chaos, nor silence, nor oblivion — it is Sabbath. Rest with God Himself.
At this point, the poem draws back. Spenser does not elaborate. He does not describe the rest in detail. Instead, he pauses, and the narrator reflects:
“Then gin I think on that which Nature sayd,/Of that same time when no more change shall be.”
The repetition is deliberate. This line has echoed throughout the cantos, and now it stands revealed as the poem’s true horizon.
The promise of “no more change” is not a denial of time, but its fulfillment.
And then — Spenser stops.
The Cantos of Mutability do not conclude with a finished vision. They break off, unfinished, with two fragmentary stanzas that gesture toward what cannot be fully spoken.
After a lifetime of poetry, Spenser chooses silence.
That silence is not failure. It is fidelity.
Spenser stops where Scripture continues. He knows the end he longs for cannot be contained by verse.
The rest Nature promises lies beyond allegory, beyond argument, beyond poetry itself. It belongs to God.
For Christian readers, the meaning is unmistakable. Jesus Christ is the Lord of that promised rest.
He entered the world of change, bore its suffering, and rose into unchanging life. The Sabbath Nature names is fulfilled in Him.
Spenser’s final wisdom is restraint. He teaches us how to live honestly within time — and how to hope without presumption for what lies beyond it.
The poem ends unfinished because the story is not yet complete.
But the sentence has been spoken.
Change is real. Change is limited. Rest is coming.
And that is enough.
Closing Verses (for reflection or emphasis)
“For all that moveth doth in change delight;/But thenceforth all shall rest eternally,/With Him that is the God of Sabbaoth hight.”
They say everything — slowly, simply, and well.
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A Benediction at the Close of Mutability
Spenser ends The Faerie Queene without an ending.
After a lifetime of poetry, argument, and moral instruction, he stops — not because he has nothing more to say, but because he has reached the edge of what poetry can bear.
The sentence has been spoken. Change is real.Change is limited. Rest is promised.
Beyond this, Spenser does not go.
He leaves us not with resolution, but with hope — hope rooted not in nature, not in virtue, not even in time itself, but in God.
The Sabbath rest Nature names is not an idea or an image to be perfected by verse. It is a dwelling place, prepared by the Lord of time.
For Christian readers, that rest has a face.
Jesus Christ gathers what time scatters.
He brings wandering to an end. He leads His people not out of history, but through it — and finally home.
Where Mutability exhausts herself with motion, Christ offers stillness. Where time presses and erodes, He keeps and restores.
Spenser leaves us here, not unresolved, but at peace. The poem stops so that faith may continue. The work of words gives way to the promise of rest.
And that is enough.
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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.
To Him shall endless prayer be made,
And praises throng to crown His head;
His Name like sweet perfume shall rise
With every morning sacrifice.
People and realms of every tongue
Dwell on His love with sweetest song;
And infant voices shall proclaim
Their early blessings on His Name.
Blessings abound wherever He reigns;
The prisoner leaps to lose his chains;
The weary find eternal rest,
And all the sons of want are blessed.
Where He displays His healing power,
Death and the curse are known no more:
In Him the tribes of Adam boast
More blessings than their father lost.
Let every creature rise and bring
Peculiar honors to our King;
Angels descend with songs again,
And earth repeat the loud amen!
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.
The kingdoms of this world are
the kingdoms of our Lord, and of
his Christ; and he shall reign for
ever and ever. Revelation 11:15
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! HALLELUJAH!
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