Poetry By English Women E-Book

• Herausgeber: Fyfield Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

This comprehensive introductory anthology of poems by forty women writers from Elizabethan to Victorian times includes work by aristocrats and frame-workers, by celebrated figures such as Aphra Behn, the Brontës, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti, and by fascinating but hitherto inaccessible poets such as the unaccountably neglected Margaret Cavendish and Mary Leapor. Love songs, feminist polemic, witty satire and religious rhapsody, bawdy fun and grave meditation abound. Dr R.E. Pritchard in a brief introduction considers the social and publishing difficulties encountered by writing women. The texts are tactfully modernized and annotated. Each poet is introduced with a biographical sketch, followed by suggestions for further reading. Compact yet varied and far-ranging, this anthology will provide enjoyment for any poetry reader and the introduction raises the issues crucial to those interested in the hidden traditions of women's poetry.

Leseprobe

English Women’s Poetry Elizabethan to Victorian

edited with an introduction and notes by R.E. Pritchard

For Susan, John and Anna

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Further Reading

QUEEN ELIZABETH I (1533–1603)

Written with a Diamond on her Window at Woodstock

Written on a Wall at Woodstock

Written in her French Psalter

The Doubt of Future Foes

On Monsieur’s Departure

ISABELLA WHITNEY (fl. 1567)

from The Admonition by the Auctor

Wyll and Testament

LADY MARY HERBERT, COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE (1561–1621)

Psalm 57: MiserereMei,Deus

Psalm 58: SiVereUtique

Psalm 92: BonumEstConfiteri

Psalm 139: Domine,Probasti

EMILIA LANYER (156–1645)

The Description of Cooke-ham

LADY MARY WROTH (1587?–1652?)

Sonnets from Pamphilia to Amphilanthus

from The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania

ANNE BRADSTREET (1613?–1672)

The Prologue

To my Dear and loving Husband

Before the Birth of one of her Children

A letter to her Husband

Upon the Burning of our House

AN COLLINS (fl. 1653?)

Song

Another Song

MARGARET CAVENDISH, DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE (1624?–1674)

An Excuse for so much writ upon my Verses

‘A Poet I am neither born, nor bred’

Of the Theam of Love

Natures Cook

A Dissert

Soule, and Body

A Woman drest by Age

Of the Animal Spirits

A Dialogue betwixt the Body and the Mind

from The Fort or Castle of Hope

A Discourse of Beasts

KATHERINE PHILIPS (1631–1664)

Friendship’s Mystery

To my Excellent Lucasia

An Answer to another persuading a Lady to marriage

To the Queen of Inconstancy

Epitaph on her Son H. P.

Lucasia, Rosania and Orinda parting at a Fountain

APHRA BEHN (1640–1689)

Love Arm’d

Song: The Willing Mistriss

The Disappointment

To Alexis

To the fair Clarinda

MARY LADY CHUDLEIGH (1656–1710)

from The Ladies Defence

To the Ladies

‘EPHELIA’ (fl. 1679?)

On a Bashful Shepherd

To One that asked me why I loved J. G.

Maidenhead

To a Proud Beauty

In the Person of a Lady, to Bajazet

ANNE KILLIGREW (1660–1685)

On a picture painted by her self

On Death

Upon the saying that my verses were made by another

ANNE FINCH, COUNTESS OF WINCHILSEA (1661–1720)

The Introduction

A Letter to Daphnis

from The Spleen

The Unequal Fetters

A Nocturnal Reverie

SARAH FYGE EGERTON (1669–1723)

from The Female Advocate

The Liberty

The Emulation

ELIZABETH SINGER ROWE (1674–1737)

To Celinda

The Expostulation

from To one that persuades me to leave the Muses

To Orestes

from A Paraphrase on the Canticles

LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU (1689–1762)

from Six Town Eclogues

The Lover

A Receipt to Cure the Vapours

‘Between your sheets’

MARY COLLIER (1690?-after 1762)

The Womans Labour

LAETITIA PILKINGTON (1712?–1750)

The Wish

Dol and Roger

A Song

A Song

Fair and Softly goes far

MARY LEAPOR (1722–1746)

from Essay on Friendship

from The Head-ache

The Sacrifice

On Winter

Mira’s Will

MARY JONES (d. 1778)

from An Epistle to Lady Bowyer

After the Small Pox

Soliloquy on an empty Purse

ANNA LAETITIA BARBAULD (1743–1825)

On a Lady’s Writing

Tomorrow

Washing-Day

The Rights of Woman

ANNA SEWARD (1742–1809)

Verses inviting Mrs C—to Tea

from Colebrook Dale

Invocation, To the Genius of Slumber

HANNAH MORE (1745–1833)

from The Bas Bleu

The Riot

CHARLOTTE SMITH (1749–1806)

Written at the Churchyard at Middleton

On the Aphorism: ‘L’Amitié est l’amour sans ailes’

from Beachy Head

Thirty-Eight

DOROTHY WORDSWORTH (1771–1855)

Grasmere – a Fragment

Floating Island at Hawkshead

Thoughts on my sick-bed

JANE TAYLOR (1783–1824)

Recreation

The Squire’s Pew

FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS (1793–1835)

The Homes of England

The Indian Woman’s Death Song

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING (1806–1861)

from Sonnets from the Portuguese

To George Sand

from Casa Guidi Windows

from Aurora Leigh

A Musical Instrument

CHARLOTTE BRONTË (1816–1855)

‘Again I find myself alone’

‘What does she dream of’

Diving

from Retrospection

EMILY BRONTË (1818–1848)

‘High waving heather’

Plead for Me

Remembrance

‘No coward soul is mine’

Stanzas

ANNE BRONTË (1820–1849)

Song

JEAN INGELOW (1820–1897)

from Divided

The High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire, 1571

DORA GREENWELL (1821–1882)

A Scherzo

The Sunflower

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI (1830–1894)

Remember

The World

From the Antique

Echo

In an Artist’s Studio

A Birthday

Up-Hill

Amor Mundi

The Thread of Life

LOUISA S. BEVINGTON (later GUGGENBERGER) (b. 1845)

Morning

Afternoon

Twilight

Midnight

from Two Songs

Wrestling

ALICE MEYNELL (1847–1922)

Renouncement

The Shepherdess

Maternity

Parentage

A Dead Harvest

Chimes

EDITH NESBIT (1858–1924)

Song

Among His Books

The Gray Folk

Villeggiature

AMY LEVY (1861–1889)

London Poets

Epitaph

A London Plane-Tree

In the Mile End Road

The Old House

MARY COLERIDGE (1861–1907)

The Other Side of a Mirror

A Moment

In Dispraise of the Moon

The Poison Flower

An Insincere Wish Addressed to a Beggar

Marriage

The White Woman

Notes

Index of First Lines

Copyright

An asterisk by the title in the text indicates that there are notes to the poem at the end of the book.

Acknowledgements

The editor and publishers gratefully acknowledge permission to use copyright material in this book as follows:

Mary Coleridge: reprinted from TheCollectedPoemsofMary Coleridge, edited by Theresa Whistler (Rupert Hart-Davis, 1954), by permission of the editor.

Elizabeth I: reprinted from ThePoemsofQueenElizabethI, edited by Leicester Bradner, by permission of the University Press of New England. Copyright © 1984 by Brown University.

Mary (Sidney) Herbert: reprinted from ThePsalmsofSirPhilipSidneyandtheCountessofPembroke, edited by J.C.A. Rathmell, by permission of New York University Press.

Emilia Lanyer: reprinted from ThePoemsofShakespeare’sDarkLady, edited by A.L. Rowse (Jonathan Cape, 1978), by permission of the editor.

Mary Wortley Montagu: reprinted from LadyMaryWortleyMontagu: EssaysandPoems, edited by Robert Halsband and Isobel Grundy (Clarendon Press, 1977), by permission of Isobel Grundy.

Dorothy Wordsworth: reprinted from DorothyWordsworthandRomanticism by Susan M. Levin, by permission of Rutgers State University Press and the Wordsworth Trust, Dove Cottage, Grasmere.

Mary Wroth: reprinted by permission of Louisiana State University Press from ThePoemsofLadyMaryWroth, edited by Josephine A. Roberts. Copyright© 1983 Louisiana State University Press.

Every effort has been made to secure permission to include the poems in this anthology; the editor and publishers would be grateful for notification of any omissions or corrections.

Introduction

An anthologist of women’s poetry from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century has the pleasure and advantage of dealing with relatively little-known poetry, of a remarkably wide range – here are to be found both love-song and feminist polemic, witty satire and religious rhapsody, bawdy fun and grave meditation. Not everyone might approve of an anthology deliberately confined to writers of one sex, but the fact is that far too few ordinary readers and students have been able to get a fair sense of the variety and vitality of English women’s poetry over these centuries. Quite simply, there are some very good poems in here, and some remarkable poets, that should be better known. Yet, often, it has hardly been apparent that they were there at all. Apart from a handful of the romanticized famous, even the more considerable have had to wait until fairly recently for sound editions, let alone general recognition. To some extent, of course, it has been cultural prejudice (conscious or unconscious, and shared by women) that has led to women poets’ near-absence from the standard, period anthologies (though that is now becoming less the case); partly they were elbowed out by the acknowledged major authors, partly not recognized by a taste unfamiliar with feminine attitudes and themes. Here, at any rate, is a selection, made not to illustrate any thesis, but simply to bring together some lively and engaging poems that should appeal to many modern readers, and provide an introduction to an important and neglected element in English poetic history.

We need to extend our sense of the history or pattern of English poetry, to bring in the overlooked. There is no one canon of English poetry – rather, a constantly shifting set of engagements and valuations produced by changing responses to contemporary life: as we see the present differently, so we cannot but see the past differently. An apparent absence proves not to have been a vacancy: muted voices become audible, individual, various, in a dialect different but recognizable and intriguing.

In this volume, spelling and typographic conventions regarding the use of capitals, italics and so on, have been brought into line with modern usage (though punctuation is usually unchanged); while this makes for greater accessibility, one should not forget what varying appearances suggest – that different linguistic usages are inseparable from changing cultures and assumptions. We are dealing with products of a patriarchal society evolving over some four hundred years. It is important to remember how much our experiences, and the words for them, are culturally shaped and conditioned: friendship, love, marriage, husband, wife, home – all have had different significances, for both sexes at different times. We should not read these poems assuming that their writers felt quite what we might feel with or through their words. Their voices echo out of the past: though the experiences and responses are recognizable, we may not catch everything they say.

Obviously, the primary psychological development of the sexes differs, producing different conceptions of interiority, identity and relationships. Even though these are partially products of the orderings developed through the shared language, one must recognize that access to and usage of these discourses is not the same for men and women. Whole ranges of behaviour – linguistic, social, sexual, economic – have been unavailable to women, virtually unthinkable, precluded by various circumstances: lack of education, religious or class proscriptions or inhibitions, assumptions of innate incapacity, as well as, for many, by lack of time, money or access. Necessarily this has affected attitudes to writing, both fundamentally – as to whether one writes, or why, or for whom – and more obviously, in relation to conventions that are gender-oriented, such as Renaissance Petrarchist love-poetry, or Romantic myths of Mother Nature. The cultural myths, concerns and changes of their times appear in women’s verse, but often differently, or indirectly. Women might be seen as constituting a major social grouping within the changing cultures of their times, with – like other groupings – varying access to and representation in the discourses of those times, and with varying degrees of awareness of constituting such a group (awareness of other affinities, such as of class or religion, sometimes being more significant). One cannot readily speak of a tradition of women’s poetry during these years – writers would need a stronger sense of a common pursuit among predecessors and contemporaries – let alone a movement, except perhaps towards the end, though some continuities and developments might be traced. Some common themes do appear in women’s poetry, of course – friendship between women; complaints against male dominance, with demands for equality and self-determination; love (variously understood); children; domestic life; sympathy with oppressed groups; the necessity of self-expression (or is it self-creation?) through writing – but changing in emphasis with changing circumstances.

The Renaissance humanist tradition of the educated lady is represented here by Queen Elizabeth, Mary Herbert and Mary Wroth: religious or moral writing was all that might be approved for ladies then; courtiers might write for self-advertisement and career advancement, but such objectives were in any case inappropriate or irrelevant to the women. The lower orders were rarely literate, with necessarily limited horizons: Isabella Whitney’s education and literary ambitions were both very unusual. Social tension about gender roles and women’s position developed during the earlier seventeenth century, as other social, religious and political strains increased; merchant-class Nonconformity was to prove beneficial to women’s interests, in encouraging literacy for independent Bible study, while devotional and ‘prophetic’ writing flourished (one might think of An Collins, or Anne Bradstreet); the Civil War provided many occasions for self-assertion, as Margaret Cavendish’s activities might suggest. The Restoration’s brief openness to personal, economic and sexual expression, and new demand for entertainment, were in practice mixed blessings. Sexual activity was flaunted (Behn, Ephelia, Pilkington – Montagu: but she was an aristocrat, and could get away with it!), but also provoked prim reactions, whereby it became even less respectable for ladies to publish (Cavendish was derided, Philips, Ephelia and Finch all published pseudonymously). For some years, the theme of women’s rights in the face of husbands’ absolute powers became almost a minor genre, to be exercised by any self-respecting woman writer (Chudleigh, Elizabeth Tollet), before the blanket of Whig complacency settled down.

The eighteenth century saw increasing numbers of middle-class women taking up writing – especially of novels (Charlotte Smith) – to satisfy the growing numbers of literate and (involuntarily) leisured women of that class, actually discouraged from independent activity and increasingly confined to a private, domestic life, subject to growing cults of motherhood and refined manners. Some, such as Mary Jones, or Fanny Burney, associated themselves with important male writers, such as Pope, Richardson and Johnson; others with ladies’ literary and philanthropic groups, producing Popean satire or sympathy with the deserving oppressed – slaves, chimney-sweeps, lower-class women writers (such as Leapor and the milk-woman poet Ann Yearsley) – while discouraging serious social questioning (Hannah More). The lower orders, trapped by poor education and by hard labour away from home, in agriculture, domestic service or the mills, produced the social complaint (Collier). The Nonconformist, progressive tradition continued to be one of major and increasing importance for women writers (Barbauld, Taylor)

The literary lady became increasingly established (More, Barbauld, Hemans); from the Restoration onwards, women poets were not neglected by reviewers, and many – More, Hemans, Adelaide Procter (reputedly Queen Victoria’s favourite poet), Ingelow – sold very well, while others – Barbauld, Barrett Browning – won considerable intellectual respect. However, pressures for respectability, sublimation and self-repression also flourished, with smothering and distorting effects (in three different ways, Hemans, Wordsworth, Rossetti). Political and intellectual developments associated with, for example, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mme de Staël and Rousseau, together with Romantic attitudes to Nature, the will and imagination, motivated and unsettled others (Barrett Browning, the Brontës) – the imagination and sexuality merging unnervingly. Many, of course, worked within Victorian values of optimism and good works (Procter, Ingelow, Greenwell – where a sublimated sexual energy is discernible); some indeed, effaced their female identities, almost subversively, behind male pseudonyms: Currer Bell, Michael Field, George Eliot. Nevertheless, as the century proceeds, a more independently feminine, and even feminist voice and sensibility become apparent. A repressive social orthodoxy provoked increasingly a melancholy, even morbid note in women’s verse (preceding, if later merging with, findesiele sen timent); sometimes this is lost in the liberating energy of radical and suffragist movements (Guggenberger, Mathilde Blind, Meynell), sometimes, a deeper alienation is suggested (Levy, Coleridge).

With Mary Coleridge the volume concludes, on the brink of the great development in women’s self-awareness, associated with suffragist and feminist movements, and the enormous expansion and flourishing of women’s poetry in this century. That, too great for inclusion in this volume, is well represented elsewhere. Regrettably, many interesting poets have had to be excluded – yet again; but for these writers, mostly ‘too little and too lately known’, here are some indications of what they were capable of, and of where more may be found.

Further Reading

Some anthologies of English women’s poetry of this period:

Alexander Dyce (ed), SpecimensofBritishPoetesses (London: T. Rodd, 1827).

J.C. Squire (ed), ABookofWomen’sVerse (Oxford: Clarendon, 1921).

Betty Travitsky (ed), TheParadiseofWomen:Writingsby EnglishwomenoftheRenaissance (Westport, Conn: Greenwood, 1981).

Germaine Greer, Jeslyn Medoff, Melinda Sansone and Susan Hastings (eds), KissingtheRod:AnAnthologyofSeventeenthCenturyWomen’sVerse, (London: Virago, 1988)

Dale Spender and Janet Todd (eds), AnthologyofBritishWomenWriters, (London: Pandora, 1989).

Roger Lonsdale (ed), EighteenthCenturyWomenPoets:AnOxfordAnthology,(Oxford:OUP‚ 1989).

Some recent critical and historical introductions:

Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar (eds), Shakespeare’sSisters:FeministEssaysonWomenPoets (Bloomington and London: Indiana UP, 1979).

Elaine Showalter (ed), TheNewFeministCriticism:EssaysonWomen,LiteratureandTheory (NY: Pantheon, 1985).

Margaret Homans, BearingtheWord:LanguageandFemale ExperienceinNineteenth-CenturyWomen’sWriting (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1986).

Elaine V. Beilin, RedeemingEve:WomenWritersoftheEnglish Renaissance(Princeton:PrincetonUP,1987).

Jan Montefiore, FeminismandPoetry:Language,Experience,IdentityinWomen’sWriting (London and NY: Pandora, 1987).

Elaine Hobby, VirtueofNecessity:EnglishWomen’sWriting1649–88, (London: Virago, 1988).

Janet Todd, FeministLiteraryHistory:ADefence (Cambridge: Polity, 1988).

Janet Todd (ed), DictionaryofBritishWomenWriters (London: Routledge, 1989).

QUEEN ELIZABETH I 1533–1603

The daughter of King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn; succeeded her half-brother, Edward VI, and her half-sister, Mary I, to the throne in 1558. Highly educated, and proficient in Latin (she also translated Boethius) and four foreign languages, an eloquent speaker and consummate politician. The focus of political and erotic ambition, and of a quasi-religious cult of ‘the Virgin Queen’, she depended for security on remaining single (‘Sempereadem,semperuna’, as in her motto).

Leicester Bradner (ed), PoemsofQueenElizabethI (Providence, R.I: Brown UP, 1964; Paul Johnson, ElizabethI:AStudyofPowerandIntellect (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974).

Written with a Diamond On her Window at Woodstock

Written with a Diamond On her Window at Woodstock*

Much suspected by me,

Nothing proved can be,

Quoth Elizabeth prisoner.

WrittenonaWallatWoodstock

Oh, fortune, thy wresting wavering state

Hath fraught with cares my troubled wit,

Whose witness this present prison late

Could bear, where once was joy’s loan quit.

Thou causedst the guilty to be loosed

From bands where innocents were inclosed,

And caused the guiltless to be reserved,

And freed those that death had well deserved.

But all herein can be nothing wrought,

So God send to my foes all they have thought. [10]

WritteninherFrenchPsalter

No crooked leg, no bleared eye,

No part deformed out of kind,

No yet so ugly half can be

As is the inward suspicious mind.

TheDoubtofFutureFoes

TheDoubtofFutureFoes*

The doubt of future foes exiles my present joy,

And wit warns me to shun such snares as threaten mine annoy;

For falsehood now doth flow, and subjects’ faith doth ebb,

Which should not be if reason ruled or wisdom weaved the web.

But clouds of joys untried do cloak aspiring minds,

Which turn to rain of late repent by changed course of winds.

The top of hope supposed the root upreared shall be,

And fruitless all their grafted guile, as shortly ye shall see.

The dazzled eyes with pride, which great ambition blinds,

Shall be unsealed by worthy wights whose foresight falsehood finds. [10]

The daughter of debate that discord aye doth sow

Shall reap no gain where former rule still peace hath taught to know.

No foreign banished wight shall anchor in this port;

Our realm brooks not seditious sects, let them elsewhere resort.

My rusty sword through rest shall first his edge employ

To poll their tops that seek such change or gape for future joy.

OnMonsieur’sDeparture

OnMonsieur’sDeparture*

I grieve and dare not show my discontent,

I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,

I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,

I seem stark mute but inwardly do prate.

I am and am not, I freeze and yet am burned,

Since from myself another self I turned.

My care is like my shadow in the sun,

Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,

Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done.

His too familiar care doth make me rue it. [10]

No means I find to rid him from my breast,

Till by the end of things it be suppressed.

Some gentler passion slide into my mind,

For I am soft and made of melting snow;

Or be more cruel, love, and so be kind.

Let me float or sink, be high or low.

Or let me live with some more sweet content,

Or die and so forget what love e’er meant.

ISABELLA WHITNEY

fl. 1567

The first Englishwoman to publish her own verses. Possibly the sister of Geoffrey Whitney, emblematist and versifier, of Coole Pilate, Cheshire, though she herself was London bred. Socially, the family seems to have been on the lower fringes of the middle class. Reasonably well-read in the popular classics, especially Ovid; writes mostly in the plain style’s method of long-winded, accumulative illustration, the anthologist’s bane. Wrote verse epistles on faithlessness in love, and sober advice to her family; the Nosegay is mostly versification of moral aphorisms in Hugh Plat’s FlowersofPhilosophie, derived from Seneca. Her career, even if not wholly successful, seems to suggest that disaster might not have been as inevitable for ‘Shakespeare’s sister’ as Virginia Woolf suggested. In this selection, punctuation also has been modernized.

TheCopyofaletter,latelywritteninmeeter,byayongeGentilwoman:toherunconstantlover (London 1567); Asweetnosegayorpleasantposye.ContayningahundredandtenPhylosophicallflowres (London, 1573); Betty Travitsky, ‘The “Wyll and Testament” of Isabella Whitney’, EnglishLiteraryReview 10 (1980) pp.76–95.

From TheadmonitionbytheAuctortoallyong Gentilwomen:AndtoalotherMaidsbeinginLove

Ye virgins that from Cupid’s tents

do bear away the foil,

Whose hearts as yet with raging love

most painfully do boil,

To you I speak: for you be they

that good advice do lack.

Oh, if I could good counsel give

my tongue should not be slack.

But such as I can give, I will

here in few words express, [10]

Which if you do observe, it will

some of your care redress.

Beware of fair and painted talk,

beware of flattering tongues:

The mermaids do pretend no good

for all their pleasant songs.

Some use the tears of crocodiles,

contrary to their heart,

And if they cannot always weep,

they wet their cheeks by art. [20]

Ovid, within his ArtofLove,

doth teach them this same knack

To wet their hand, and touch their eyes,

so oft as tears they lack.

Why have you such deceit in store?

have you such crafty wile?

Less craft than this God knows would soon

us simple souls beguile.

And will ye not leave off? but still

delude us in this wise? [30]

Sith it is so, we trust we shall

take heed to feigned lies.

Trust not a man at the first sight,

but try him well before:

I wish all maids within their breasts

to keep this thing in store.

For trial shall declare his truth,

and show what he doth think,

Whether he be a lover true,

or do intend to shrink. […] [40]

Hero did try Leander’s truth,

before that she did trust:

Therefore she found him unto her

both constant, true, and just.

For he always did swim the sea

when stars in sky did glide,

Till he was drowned by the way

near hand unto the side.

She scrat her face, she tare her hair

(it grieveth me to tell) [50]

When she did know the end of him

that she did love so well.

But like Leander there be few,

therefore in time take heed,

And always try before you trust,

so shall you better speed.

The little fish that careless is

within the water clear:

How glad is he, when he doth see

a bait for to appear. [60]

He thinks his hap right good to be,

that he the same could spy,

And so the simple fool doth trust

too much before he try.

O little fish what hap hadst thou,

to have such spiteful fate,

To come into one’s cruel hands,

out of so happy state:

Thou didst suspect no harm, when thou

upon the bait did look: [70]

O that thou hadst Linceus’ eyes

for to have seen the hook.

Then hadst thou with thy pretty mates

been playing in the streams,

Whereas Sir Phoebus daily doth

show forth his golden beams.

But sith thy fortune is so ill,

to end thy life on shore:

Of this thy most unhappy end

I mind to speak no more, [80]

But of thy fellow’s chance that late

such pretty shaft did make

That he from fisher’s hook did sprint

before he could him take.

And now he pries on every bait,

suspecting still that prick

For to lie in every thing,

Wherewith the fishers strike.

And since the fish, that reason lacks,

once warned, doth beware: [90]

Why should not we take heed to that

that turneth us to care.

And I who was deceived late,

by one’s unfaithful tears,

Trust now for to be ware, if that

I live this hundred years.

FINIS. Is. W.

WyllandTestament

WyllandTestament*

[on having to leave London]

The time is come I must depart

from thee oh famous City:

I never yet, to rue my smart,

did find that thou hadst pity.

Wherefore small cause there is, that I

should grieve from thee to go:

But many women foolishly,

like me, and other moe,

Do such a fixed fancy set

on those which least deserve, [10]

That long it is ere wit we get

away from them to swerve […]

And now hath time put me in mind

of thy great cruelness,

That never once a help would find,

to ease me in distress […]

No, no, thou never didst me good,

nor ever wilt, I know:

Yet I am in no angry mood,

but will, or ere I go, [20]

In perfect love and charity,

my testament here write,

And leave to thee such treasury

as I in it recite.

Now stand aside and give me leave

to write my latest will,

And see that none you do deceive,

of that I leave them til. […]

I whole in body, and in mind,

but very weak in purse [30]

Do make, and write my testament

for fear it will be worse. […]

I first of all to London leave,

because I there was bred,

Brave buildings rare, of churches store,

and Paul’s to the head. […]

Watling Street and Canwyck Street

I full of woollen leave,

And linen store in Friday Street,

if they me not deceive. [40]

And those which are of calling such,

that costlier they require,

I mercers leave, with silk so rich,

as any would desire.

In Cheap of them, they store shall find,

and likewise in that street,

I goldsmiths leave, with jewels such

as are for ladies meet.

And plate to furnish cupboards with,

full brave there you shall find, [50]

With purl of silver and of gold,

to satisfy your mind.

With hoods, bongraces, hats or caps,

such store are in that street,

As if on t’one side you should miss,

the tother serves you for’t. […]

For women shall you tailors have,

by Bow the chiefest dwell:

In every lane you some shall find,

can do indifferent well. [60]

And for the men, few streets or lanes

but body-makers be,

And such as make the sweeping cloaks,

with gardes beneath the knee.

Artillery at Temple Bar,

and dagges at Tower Hill;

Swords and bucklers of the best

are nigh the Fleet until. […]

At Steelyard store of wines there be,

your dulled minds to glad, [70]

And handsome men, that must not wed

except they leave their trade.

They oft shall seek for proper girls,

and some perhaps shall find

That need compels, or lucre lures,

to satisfy their mind.

And near the same, I houses leave

for people to repair,

To bathe themselves, so to prevent

infection of the air. […] [80]

And that the poor, when I am gone,

have cause for me to pray,

I will to prisons portions leave,

what though but very small:

Yet that they may remember me,

occasion be it shall. […]

The Newgate once a month shall have

a sessions for his share,

Lest, being heaped, infection might

procure a further care. [90]

And at those sessions some shall ‘scape

with burning near the thumb,

And afterward to beg their fees,

till they have got the sum. […]

To all the bookbinders by Paul’s

because I like their art,

They every week shall money have,

when they from books depart. […]

For maidens poor, I widowers rich

do leave, that oft shall dote, [100]

And by that means shall marry them,

to set the girls afloat.

And wealthy widows will I leave,

to help yong gentlemen,

Which when you have, in any case

be courteous to them then,

And see their plate and jewels eke

may not be marred with rust,

Nor let their bags too long be full,

for fear that they do burst. […] [110]

To Smithfield I must something leave,

my parents there did dwell:

So careless for to be of it,

none would account it well.

Wherefore it thrice a week shall have

of horse and neat good store,

And in his Spital, blind and lame

to dwell for evermore.

And Bedlam must not be forgot,

for that was oft my walk: [120]

I people there too many leave,

That out of tune do talk.

At Bridewell there shall beadles be,

and Matrons that shall still

See chalk well chopped, and spinning plied,

and turning of the mill. […]

And also leave I at each Inn

of Court, or Chancery,

Of gentlemen, a youthful rout,

full of activity, [130]

For whom I store of books have left,

at each bookbinder’s stall

And part of all that London hath

to furnish them withal.

And when they are with study cloyed,

to recreate their mind,

Of tennis courts, of dancing schools,

and fence, they store shall find.

And every Sunday at the least,

I leave to make them sport, [140]

In divers places players, that

Of wonders shall report.

Now London have I, for thy sake,

within thee, and without,

As come into my memory,

dispersed round about

Such needful things, as they should have

here left now unto thee:

When I am gone, with conscience

let them dispersed be. […] [150]

This xx. of October I,

in ANNO DOMINI:

A thousand v. hundred seventy three,

as almanacs do descry,

Did write this will with mine own hand

and it to London gave:

In witness of the standers-by,

whose name, if you will have,

Paper, pen and standish were,

at that time present by, [160]

With Time, who promised to reveal,

so fast as she could hie,

The same, lest of my nearer kin

for any thing should vary.

So finally I make an end,

no longer can I tarry.

FINIS. by Is. W