　　　　　　　　(3)Time symbolism in 'Epithalamion'
　 Epithalamion consists of 24 stanzas, of which the last is about half the length of the rest. This number 24 symbolizes 24 hours of a day, that is, Spenser's nuptial day. Stanza i is the poem's prologue and Stanzas ii-iv belong to the dawning. So we may understand the day begins at Stanza v with the sunrise: 'Phoebus gins to show his glorious head' (77).³⁴ The night begins at Stanza xvii: 'now night is come, now soon her disarray' (300). So we see the day stanzas (v~xvi)are interposed between the divided night stanzas (i-iv and xvii-xxiv). This ratio of division, 1:2 often signified concord or harmony. ³⁵　This day-and-night stanzaic structure together with the 24 stanza-hours forms the basis of the poem's numerological pattern.

　Each of the day stanzas corresponds in its imagery and metaphor with a night stanza 12 hours later, so that they make altogether 12 pairs of 'matching stanzas'. The correspondence between the pairs takes the form of contrasts as well as parallels. Take, for example, stanzas v and xvii which make a pair. In the former the bride is asked to wake up as Phoebus begins to show his head; in the latter damsels are asked to bring the bride into the bridal chamber and lay her down, since 'night is come'. Verbal parallels of　'sleep' and 'wake' are to be pointed at (7-2 and 308).³⁶ The birds' 'love-learnèd song'(88)and 'the dewy leaves' (89) suggest the month of May, while Maia(307) is associated with the same month. We notice both contrast and parallel between the two refrains: 'all the wood them answer...' (91) and 'the wood no more shall answer...' (314). It has been pointed at, however, that the first 4 pairs, Stanzas i-iv and xiii-xvi, do not match well and their imagery corresponds rather metaphorically. ³⁷ The explanation for this ambiguity is that the poem starts with the previous night of the wedding, so that the first 4 Stanza-hours do not belong to the same day-and-night cycle when the days are reckoned by the sunrise.³⁸

　There is another place of astronomical numerology, less obvious, in the number of the lines. Epithalamion is made up of 365 long lines (mostly pentameter) and 68 short lines (trimeter). These short lines distributed to each stanza divide it into 4 long-1ine groups, except Stanzas xv and xxiii (3 groups) and xxiv(2 groups). Consequently the total of the long-line groups comes to 92. Now we will at once recognize the number 365 symbolizes the 365 annual days, here esp. associated with the sun's course through the Zodiac.　As for 92 divisions by the short lines, this number is supposed to signify for Elizabethan readers the days between the summer solstice and the autumn equinox ³⁹ in this context. This is according to the Ptolemaic system, in which the annual course of the sun was divided into quarters; so that 92 can signify one of the four seasonal periods, here summer, the season to which Spenser's wedding day belongs.

　The last stanza is called 'Envoy', and this also implies another astronomical number symbolism. The Envoy has 7 1ines, nearly half of the longer stanzas. This indicates that another way of reckoning the total of the stanzas is 23½.　This number is supposed to suggest the degrees of inclination of the ecliptic, 23.5º. The ecliptic is the path of the sun during the course of the year, so that in the context of our poem this 23.5 may symbolize the position the sun occupies at midsummer from which it ‘declines’(267).

　The time symbolism we have seen above is complicated and very rich in associations. These patterns represent time, esp. time in its cyclical movements. In this multiple structure time is symbolized by cycles--the diurnal, the annual, the seasonal and the solar--and by the alternation of day and night. The patterns are entirely formal and are made up of the spatial structure of the lines and the stanzas.

　Moreover, the imagery and actions pictured through these lines and stanzas are closely integrated into this temporal structure. `Phoebus’(77) who shows his‘glorious head' indicates the start of the day. 'Fair Sun' (117) is asked not to mar the bride's beautiful face by his ‘lifeful heat', which suggests the heat of the midsummer sun. The 'fairest Planet' (282) is commanded to hurry to his 'home', to speed the approach of the evening. And, just at the turning point from the day to the night, 'the bright evening star' (286)appears. Night (315) is summoned to enwrap the lovers, and Cynthia (374), the moon, shows her face suggesting it is already midnight. Finally 'the temple of the gods' (409) invites the couple to the eternal where they are expected to ascend. All these planetary images are associated with the passage of time, thus representing the universe that responds to the joyful event of the day.

　 Besides, 'fair　hours' born of ‘Day and Night' (98-99) are goddesses who control the diurnal hours and the seasons. They supply this world with 'all that is fair'. 'Garlands' are one of the key images in Epithalamion.⁴⁰ They deck nymphs, crown the bride, and decorate the pillars and the posts. However, they are not meant for mere decoration. 'Garlands' in the context of this temporal symbolism reveal themselves to be seasonal flowers, and to signify the cycle of the seasons on this earth. The morning song of birds is also appointed to join at certain time of the day. Man, flowers and birds, nymphs, gods and goddesses, the planetary spheres, the highest heaven --- the whole universe is depicted, as it were, woven into the temporal structure of the poem. We find, in other words, the entire spatial range of the universe is integrated into these cyclical movements of time.

　This unification of time and space is, we may say, one of the important features of Elizabethan literature. And this time-space-unified conception of the universe, it seems to me, found a unique expression in Spenser's works. This view, esp. when it is applied to the comprehension of natural life on earth, brought to him an idea of 'phenomenal flux', the view that the whole world is involved in a constant flow of changes.

　Some time before or perhaps after ⁴¹ the composition of Epithalamion, he wrote a set of poems called the Mutabilitie Cantos. In those cantos Spenser depicted a 'Titanesse', who represents 'mutability'. She dares to defy the authority of Jupiter, the governor of peace and order of the universe. The assembly of gods is summoned and her case is taken up and judged. During this trial she calls up a masque as the evidence for her suit. The masque consists of the 4 elements, that is, man and the beasts [the earth], the water, the air, the fire; the 4 seasons; the 12 months of the year; Day and Night; Life, and lastly Death. Titaness asserts that al1 these are subject to constant changes and that there is no part in the universe where change does not reign. In the final scene, however, her claim proves to be self-refuting.

　The idea of mutability embodied in this Titaness seems to involve a view that time is the destroyer of everything, a view quite fami1iar to Spenser. Indeed Titaness shows a trait of an evil power that rebels against the eternal order of the universe. Somehow she could be equated to the Satanic character that brought sin into the garden of Eden.⁴² Is change the only law that governs the phenomenal world? Is there any way to cope with this 'time' and conquer change in this ephemeral nature? This was the question that caught many Renaissance writers, as it did Spenser. In the Mutabilitie Cantos as the masque proceeds and unfolds various human activities, what has seemed a mere inconstancy of changes takes on a brighter look and change itself begins to suggest a course to better perfection.⁴³

　In Epithalamion the cyclical change of time is the texture upon which a series of events are depicted --- but not as a mere flux. Human activity pictured here is not coated with any gloomy transience. On the contrary, 'mutability' itself seems to have been changed into a dynamic impulse　that enlivens man's heart and fills the firmament with universal joy. How is this possible?　What