Known as a ‘square poem’, this twelve-line verse with each line having twelve syllables and picking up the constructive metaphors of SC (e.g., ‘frame’) builds the poem out of the twelve months and squares it ‘for every yeare’. Cf. Puttenham, Arte of English Poesie (1589) 2.12, which identifies the ‘Quadrangle Equilater’ as a poem using ‘no more verses than your verse is of syllables’, and links it with the solidarity of the earth and, through Aristotle’s Ethics, with the ‘constant minded man . . . hominem quadratum, “a square man.”’ Spenser’s stanza consists of six epic hexameter couplets (see December headnote). The textual status of the Epilogue is uncertain. 1579 and all the early quartos that follow it print it after the December Glosse, a position of acute subordination, as if the original compositor did not know where it belonged. Yet the poem itself constitutes a remarkable claim of authorial autonomy. In particular, it does three things. First, it claims the status of immortality for the artwork, strong enough to endure ‘till’ the Last Judgment (1-4). Second, it asserts the work’s Christian authority for teaching good shepherds how to feed their flock and protect it from evil (5-6). Third, it gives a ‘free passporte’ to the ‘Calender’ to join an international community of works and authors from antiquity and the Middle Ages, even as it modestly admits its humility before their ‘high steppes’ (7-12). Viewed from this perspective, the Epilogue contradicts its position in the text; yet viewed in light of the modesty topos controlling the claims, the subordinate textual position seems not just appropriate but precise, forming yet another instance of this author’s self-protection (see 7-12n below). As with so much of SC, the textual position of the Epilogue invites interpretation. Most importantly, its position harks back to the close of ‘To His Booke’, as if confirming the success that was still in doubt there, so that reading the poem seems to enact a triumphant public reception of it.