December

So now my yeare drawes to his latter terme,
My spring is spent, my sommer burnt vp quite:
My harueste hasts to stirre vp winter sterne,
And bids him clayme with rigorous rage hys right.
So nowe he stormes with many a sturdy stoure,
So now his blustring blast eche coste doth scoure.


The carefull cold hath nypt my rugged rynde,
And in my face deepe furrowes eld hath pight:
My head besprent with hoary frost I fynd,
And by myne eie the Crow his clawe dooth wright.
Delight is layd abedde, and pleasure past,
No sonne now shines, cloudes han all ouercast.

November

Not now nis the time of merimake.
Nor Pan to herye, nor with loue to playe:
Sike myrth in May is meetest for to make,
Or summer shade vnder the cocked haye.
But nowe sadde Winter welked hath the day,
And Phoebus weary of his yerely taske,
Ystabled hath his steedes in lowlye laye,
And taken vp his ynne in Fishes haske.
Thilke sollein season sadder plight doth aske:
And loatheth sike delightes, as thou doest prayse:
The mornefull Muse in myrth now list ne maske,
As shee was wont in youth and sommer dayes. 

OCTOBER

Piers, I haue pyped erst so long with payne,

That all mine Oten reedes bene rent and wore:

And my poore Muse hath spent her spared store,

Yet little good hath got, and much lesse gayne.

Such pleasaunce makes the Grashopper so poore,

And ligge so layd, when Winter doth her straine.

Sixteenth Century Weather

The Shepheardes Calendar

September

Diggon, I am so stiffe, and so stanck,

That vneth may I stand any more:

And nowe the Westerne wind bloweth sore,

That nowe is in his chiefe souereigntee,

Beating the withered leafe from the tree.

Sitte we downe here under the hill:

Tho may we talke, and tellen our fill,

And make a mocke at the blustring blast.

Now say on Diggon, what euer thou hast.

Were the seasons in a different configuration in the 16th century? September seems rather early for the leaves to be blown off the trees and I've noticed this elsewhere since deciding to use The Shepheardes Calendar to mark the passing months. Either Spenser was not particularly accurate in this or changes happen at different times now. The New Style calendar, adopted in 1732, means that we are thirteen days in advance of Spenser's time. So this might account for part of this effect. But surely not all of it.

August

TELL me Perigot, what shalbe the game, Wherefore with myne thou dare thy musick matche?

Or bene thy Bagpypes renne farre out of frame? Or hath the Crampe thy ioynts benomd with ache?

*
Ah Willye, when the hart is ill assayde, How can Bagpipe, or ioynts be well apayd?

JULY

In Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender for July there is a conversation between two shepherds about the relative merits of prominence and obscurity. Thomalin says:”He that strives to touch the starres, oft stumbles at a strawe”, while Morrell is of the view that Thomalin should climb his hill:

What ho, thou jollye shepheardes swayne
come up the hyll to me:
Better is, than the lowly playne
als for thy flocke and thee.

The hill is allegorically conjectured as a place of importance. But Thomalin will have none of it, fearing the consequences of such presumption. Hills are dangerous places. As the gloss puts it, he “takes occasion to prayse the mean and the lowly state as that wherein is safetye”. Morrel’s reply is that “perfect felicitie dwelleth in supremacie”. The relative merits of hill and dale are thus discussed in the guise of rustic conversation which is also an allegorical vehicle for observations on religious enthusiasms as opposed to worldly pragmatism.

There is also a statement about poetic diction and style here. In the June entry Colin Clout (alias Spenser) had said “I never lyst presume to Parnasse hyll”. The pastoral conventions of retreat and the quiet life also reflect a commitment to native literary style (a conscious return to Chaucer) and avoidance of fancy literary language in favour of simpler, more homely (though archaic) diction. If this also reflected the contemporary conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism , it only shows how difficult it is to separate art from politics, culture from the exercise of power. Spenser later became involved in the exercise of power in Ireland. As with Virgil, his own progression from pastoral to epic also reflects – if not allegorically at least figuratively – a progression from the politics of retreat to those of engagement.

His ploughshare must become a sword; his shepherd’s crook a sophisticated pen. And so the hill is climbed and “perfect felicitie” achieved. Or perhaps not. Returned from his Irish campaigns he died in London in the words of Ben Jonson,“for lack of bread”. Posterity was kinder to him and he has a tomb next to Chaucer’s in Westminster Abbey. So between Thomalin’s In medio virtus and Morrell’s In summo felictitas, we might conclude, as a modern poet did of Virgil, that

They gave him for his faith a happy lot:
The waving of the meadows in his song
And the spontaneous laurel at his tomb.
(Oliver St John Gogarty)

Or, nearer his own time, the words of Dekker:

“Grave Spenser was no sooner entered into this chapell of Apollo but these elders, Fathers of the divine Furie, gave him a Laurer and sung his welcome … closing their lippes in silence and turning all their eares for attention, to heare him sing out the rest of his Faerie Queene’s praises.”

Playing in a Lowly Grove

Two Views of Midsummer from 

Spenser's Shepheardes Calendar for Iune

Hobbinol:

But frendly Faeries, met with many Graces, 

And lightfote Nymphes can chace the lingring night, 

With Heydeguyes, and trimly trodden traces, 

Whilst systers nyne, which dwell on Parnasse hight, 

Doe make them musick, for their more delight: 

And Pan himselfe to kisse their christall faces, 

Will pype and daunce, when Phoebe shineth bright: 

Such pierlesse pleasures haue we in these places. 

[...]

Colin:

Of Muses Hobbinol, I conne no skill: 

For they bene daughters of the hyghest Ioue, 

And holden scorne of homely shepheards quill. 

For sith I heard, that Pan with Phoebus stroue, 

Which him to much rebuke and Daunger droue: 

I neuer lyst presume to Parnasse hyll, 

But pyping lowe in shade of lowly groue, 

I play to please my selfe, all be it ill. 

The urge to idealise from Hobbinol is here opposed by Colin (Spenser's alter ego) who rejects the urge to join the gods on Parnassus but prefers instead to play his pipe in a 'lowly grove'. I'm reminded of the modern poet R.S Thomas who said he "played a small pipe by the side of the road" and affected to prefer an unfenced Welsh mountain to the ordered gardens of a London park. Neither Spenser nor Thomas could be said to have absolutely resisted the preferments of high office but both embody this urge in at least some of what they wrote and Thomas maintained his aloofness from the establishment to the end.

The value of a life lived away from the cut and thrust of the city, the court, the high table, the Parnassian heights has been the stuff of a pastoral ideal in many periods of history that has at times been a major impetus and at others seemed like an odd aberration. But not to me. 

Spenser's Glosses

As for the Spenser quotes over on the right... why is it that I find the glosses so fascinating in The Shepheardes Calendar? Apparently they were done by Spenser's associate Edward Kirke who, it has been noted, "sometimes unconsciously, sometimes of set purpose, fails to express his author's intention" (E de Selincourt). Ostensibly part of the project of redefining English poetic diction (not for the last time) they capture in their very irascibility the tone of the fascination of the current of platonic mysticism in the protestantism of the period with the pastoral ideal, while needing to dismiss the pagan superstitions which might be associated with it. That marvellous gloss on 'Ladyes of the lake' with its dismissal of the 'lowd lyers' who perpetrated Arthurian myth together with the desire to precisely define the nature of nymphs is a glorious example.

FEBRUARY

AH for pittie, wil ranke Winters rage,

These bitter blasts neuer ginne tasswage?

The kene cold blowes through my beaten hyde,

All as I were through the body gryde.

My ragged rontes all shiver and shake,

As doen high Towers in an earthquake:

They wont in the wind wagge their wrigle tailes,

Perke as Peacock: but nowe it auales.

Kene) sharpe. 

Gride) perced: an olde word much vsed of Lidgate, but not found (that I know of) in Chaucer.

 Ronts) young bullockes

Ianuarye

You naked trees, whose shady leaues are lost

Wherein the byrds were wont to build their bowre:

And now are cloth'd with mosse and hoary frost,

Instead of bloosmes, werewith your buds did flowre:

I see your teares, that from your boughes doe raine,

Whose drops in drery ysicles remaine.

{More from Colin Cloute - (who knows not Colin Cloute?) - as the year progresses}