What man that sees the ever whirling wheel Of Change, the which all mortal things doth sway, But that thereby doth find and plainly feel How Mutability in them doth play Her cruel sports to many men's decay.
He imagines a mighty Titaness, sister of Hecate and Bellona, most beautiful and most terrible, who challenges universal dominion over all things in earth and heaven, sun and moon, planets and stars, times and seasons, life and death; and finally over the wills and thoughts and natures of the gods, even of Jove himself; and who pleads her cause before the awful Mother of all things, figured as Chaucer had already imagined her:--
Great Nature, ever young, yet full of eld; Still moving, yet unmoved from her stead; Unseen of any, yet of all beheld, Thus sitting on her throne.
He imagines all the powers of the upper and nether worlds assembled before her on his own familiar hills, instead of Olympus, where she shone like the Vision which "dazed" those "three sacred saints" on "Mount Thabor." Before her pass all things known of men, in rich and picturesque procession; the Seasons pass, and the Months, and the Hours, and Day and Night, Life, as "a fair young lusty boy," Death, grim and grisly;--
Yet is he nought but parting of the breath, Ne ought to see, but like a shade to weene, Unbodied, unsoul'd, unheard, unseene--
and on all of them the claims of the Titaness, Mutability, are acknowledged. Nothing escapes her sway in this present state, except Nature which, while seeming to change, never really changes her ultimate constituent elements, or her universal laws. But when she seemed to have extorted the admission of her powers, Nature silences her. Change is apparent, and not real; and the time is coming when all change shall end in the final changeless change.
"I well consider all that ye have said, And find that all things stedfastnesse do hate And changed be; yet, being rightly wayd, They are not changed from their first estate; But by their change their being do dilate, And turning to themselves at length againe, Do worke their owne perfection so by fate: Then over them Change doth not rule and raigne, But they raigne over Change, and do their states maintaine.
"Cease therefore, daughter, further to aspire, And thee content thus to be rul'd by mee, For thy decay thou seekst by thy desire; But time shall come that all shall changed bee, And from thenceforth none no more change shal see." So was the Titanesse put downe and whist, And Jove confirm'd in his imperiall see. Then was that whole assembly quite dismist, And Natur's selfe did vanish, whither no man wist.