Short time's endless monument

the long version

"Edmund Spenser's Epithalamion, written in 1595 to celebrate his own marriage to Elizabeth Boyle, has long been considered one of the greatest of all marriage odes. It describes the events of the marriage day and night, and the beauty of the bride, with elaborate imagery. Now, 365 years after the publication of Spenser's poem, A. Kent Hieatt has discovered in the ode a symbolical numerical structure which has gone unmarked throughout more than three centuries, and which, when understood by the reader, adds new levels of meaning to one of the treasures of English poetry"--Book jacket.