ABSTRACT

The immediate resonance of these “ idle instruments / Of sleeping praise,” suspended or “ hong” upon a tree, is the iconography of Venus and Marswith Verdant lying like the disarmed warrior in the lap of his paramour before Vulcan, the formerly impotent voyeur husband, rushes in upon them with his crafty “net.” The suspension or hanging of these instruments reiterates the suspensions of the Bower itself, and the hovering of Acrasia as she cannibalistically “ pastures” her eyes upon her powerless subject. But the instruments hung upon a tree also recall a very different and specifically lyric context-one that will lead us toward the various strains of lyricism that cross in this crucial Spenserian scene. This context is the suspended song and suspended lyric instruments of the haunting Psalm 137:

By the rivers of Babel we sate, and there we wept, when we remembered Zion.