Things to keep in mind:
The secret of what keeps it going.
What, after all, kept him writing with any sense of accomplishment if his view of the present state of life was so melancholy, and his faith in words to sustain a better vision so frail? Why did not he cease before he did?
The answer may be partly that for Spenser, in his own particular form of exile in Ireland, writing had become somehow synonymous with living. The long poem, instinct with a better time, peopled with the glistening creations of his imagination, sustained him despite the profound disappointments and frustrations of creating and living. To stop one would have meant stopping the other. That the attraction of ceasing was strong is attested by the temptation to give in that assails his epic protagonists; that he saw no final reconciliation of the images in his head and what he saw around him, or even what he could write, is evident from his own words and from the fact that all ideal moments of vision vanish and all the lovely ladies and brave knights meet only to part with promises of future bliss.
—posted 645 days ago
