The ‘November,’ like the ‘April,’ consists for the most part of a lay composed in an elaborate stanza—­there a panegyric, here an elegy.  This time it is sung by Colin himself, and we again find reference to the Rosalind motive.  The subject of the threnody is a nymph of the name of Dido, whose identity can only be vaguely conjectured.  The chief point of external form in which Spenser has departed from his model, namely Marot’s dirge for Loyse de Savoye, and from other pastoral elegies, is in the use of a different form of verse in the actual lament from that in which the setting of the poem is composed.  Otherwise he has followed tradition none the less closely for having infused the conventional form with a poetry of his own.  The change by which the lament passes into the song of rejoicing is traditional—­and though borrowed by Spenser from Marot, is as old as Vergil.  Both Browne and Milton later made use of the same device.  Spenser writes: 

    Why wayle we then? why weary we the Gods with playnts,
    As if some evill were to her betight? 
    She raignes a goddesse now emong the saintes,
    That whilome was the saynt of shepheards light,
    And is enstalled nowe in heavens hight. 
      I see thee, blessed soule, I see
      Walke in Elisian fieldes so free. 
      O happy herse! 
    Might I once come to thee, (O that I might!)
      O joyfull verse!

Although some critics, looking too exclusively to the poetic merit of the Calender as the cause of its importance, have perhaps overestimated the beauty of this and the April lyrics, the skill with which the intricate stanzas are handled must be apparent to any careful reader.  As the Calender in poetry generally, so even more decidedly in their own department, do these songs mark a distinct advance in formal evolution.  Just as they were themselves foreshadowed in the recurrent melody of Wyatt’s farewell to his lute—­

    My lute, awake! perform the last
    Labour that thou and I shall waste,
      And end that I have now begun;
    For when this song is sung and past,
      My lute, be still, for I have done—­

so they in their turn heralded the full strophic sonority of the Epithalamium.

Lastly, in the ‘December’ we have the counterpart of the January eclogue, a monologue in which Colin laments his wasted life and joyless, for

      Winter is come, that blowes the balefull breath,
      And after Winter commeth timely death.

    Adieu, delightes, that lulled me asleepe;
    Adieu, my deare, whose love I bought so deare;
    Adieu, my little Lambes and loved sheepe;
    Adieu, ye Woodes, that oft my witnesse were: 
      Adieu, good Hobbinoll, that was so true,
      Tell Rosalind, her Colin bids her adieu.[94]