Poetry By English Women

by R. E. ; Pritchard

  And to this mend, alas, no art is able,

  ‘Cause nature made it so irreparable.

  Nor can I, like that fluent sweet-tongued Greek,

  Who lisped at first, in future times speak plain. [20]

  By art he gladly found what he did seek,

  A full requital of his striving pain.

  Art can do much, but this maxim’s most sure:

  A weak or wounded brain admits no cure.

  I am obnoxious to each carping tongue

  Who says my hand a needle better fits,

  A poet’s pen all scorn I thus should wrong,

  For such despite they cast on female wits:

  If what I do prove well, it won’t advance,

  They’ll say it’s stol’n, or else it was by chance. [30]

  But sure those antique Greeks were far more mild,

  Else, of our sex why feigned they those nine,

  And poesy made Calliope’s own child;

  So’mongst the rest they placed the arts divine:

  But this weak knot they will full soon untie,

  The Greeks did naught but play the fool and lie.

  Let Greeks be Greeks, and women what they are,

  Men have precedency and still excel,

  It is but vain unjustly to wage war;

  Men can do best, and women know it well. [40]

  Pre-eminence in all and each is yours;

  Yet grant some small acknowledgement of ours.

  And oh ye high flown quills that soar the skies,

  And ever with your prey still catch your praise,

  If e’er you deign these lowly lines your eyes,

  Give thyme or parsley wreath, I ask no bays;

  This mean and unrefined ore of mine

  Will make your glist’ring gold but more to shine.

  To my Dear and loving Husband

  If ever two were one, then surely we.

  If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;

  If ever wife was happy in a man,

  Compare with me ye women if you can.

  I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,

  Or all the riches that the East doth hold.

  My love is such that rivers cannot quench,

  Nor aught but love from thee, give recompence.

  Thy love is such I can no way repay,

  The heavens reward thee manifold I pray. [10]

  Then while we live, in love let’s so persever,

  That when we live no more, we may live ever.

  Before the Birth of one of her Children

  All things within this fading world hath end,

  Adversity doth still our joys attend;

  No ties so strong no friends so clear and sweet,

  But with death’s parting blow is sure to meet.

  The sentence past is most irrecoverable,

  A common thing, yet oh inevitable;

  How soon, my Dear, death may my steps attend,

  How soon’t may be thy lot to lose thy friend,

  We both are ignorant, yet love bids me

  These farewell lines to recommend to thee, [10]

  That when that knot’s untied that made us one,

  I may seem thine, who in effect am none.

  And if I see not half my days that’s due

  What nature would, God grant to yours and you;

  The many faults that well you know I have,

  Let be interred in my oblivious grave;

  If any worth or virtue were in me,

  Let that live freshly in thy memory,

  And when thou feel’st no griefs, as I no harms,

  Yet love thy dead, who long lay in thine arms: [20]

  And when thy loss shall be repaid with gains

  Look to my little babes my dear remains.

  And if thou love thy self, or loved’st me

  These O protect from stepdame’s injury.

  And if chance to thine eyes shall bring this verse,

  With some sad sighs honour my absent hearse;

  And kiss this paper for thy love’s dear sake,

  Who with salt tears this last farewell did take.

  A Letter to her Husband, absent upon Publick employment*

  My head, my heart, mine eyes, my life, nay more,

  My joy, my magazine of earthly store,

  If two be one, as surely thou and I,

  How stayest thou there, whilst I at Ipswich lie?

  So many steps, head from the heart to sever;

  If but a neck, soon should we be together:

  I, like the earth this season, mourn in black,

  My sun is gone so far in’s zodiac,

  When whilst I ‘joyed, nor storms, nor frosts I felt,

  His warmth such frigid colds did cause to melt. [10]

  My chilled limbs now numbed lie forlorn;

  Return, return sweet Sol from Capricorn;

  In this dead time, alas, what can I more

  Than view those fruits which through thy heat I bore?

  Which sweet contentment yield me for a space,

  True living pictures of their father’s face.

  O strange effect! now thou art southward gone,

  I weary grow, the tedious day so long;

  But when thou northward to me shalt return,

  I wish my sun may never set, but burn [20]

  Within the Cancer of my glowing breast,

  The welcome house of him my dearest guest.

  Where ever, ever stay, and go not thence,

  Till nature’s sad decree shall call thee hence;

  Flesh of thy flesh, bone of thy bone,

  I here, thou there, yet both but one.

  Upon the Burning of our House July 10th 1666 Copied out of a loose paper

  In silent night when rest I took

  For sorrow near I did not look

  I wakened was with thund’ring noise

  And piteous shrieks of dreadful voice.

  That fearful sound of ‘Fire!’ and ‘Fire!’

  Let no man know is my desire.

  I, starting up, the light did spy,

  And to my God my heart did cry

  To strengthen me in my distress

  And not to leave me succourless. [10]

  Then, coming out, beheld a space

  The flame consume my dwelling place.

  And when I could no longer look,

  I blessed His name that gave and took,

  That laid my goods now in the dust.

  Yea, so it was, and so ’twas just.

  It was His own, it was not mine,

  Far be it that I should repine;

  He might of all justly bereft

  But yet sufficient for us left. [20]

  When by the ruins oft I passed

  My sorrowing eyes aside did cast,

  And here and there the places spy

  Where oft I sat and long did lie:

  Here stood that trunk, and there that chest,

  There lay that store I counted best.

  My pleasant things in ashes lie,

  And them behold no more shall I.

  Under thy roof no guest shall sit,

  Nor at thy table eat a bit. [30]

  No pleasant tale shall e’er be told,

  Nor things recounted done of old.

  No candle e’er shall shine in thee,

  Nor bridegroom’s voice e’er heard shall be.

  In silence ever shall thou lie,

  Adieu, adieu, all’s vanity.

  Then straight I ’gin my heart to chide,

  And did thy wealth on earth abide?

  Did’st fix thy hope on mould’ring dust?

  The arm of flesh didst make thy trust? [40]

  Raise up thy thoughts above the sky

  That dunghill mists away may fly.

  Thou hast an house on high erect,

  Framed by that mighty Architect,

  With glory richly furnished,

  Stands permanent though this be fled.


  It’s purchased and paid for too

  By Him who hath enough to do.

  A price so vast as is unknown

  Yet by His gift is made thine own; [50]

  There’s wealth enough, I need no more,

  Farewell, my pelf, farewell my store.

  The world no longer let me love,

  My hope and treasure lies above.

  A.B.

  AN COLLINS

  fl. 1653?

  Nothing is known, and little can be deduced from her only book, except chronic illness – ‘restrained from bodily employment’ – and religious orthodoxy. The verse shows considerable technical experimentation and skill.

  Divine Songs and Meditacions Composed By An Collins (London, 1653); reprinted in Stanley N. Stewart (ed.), (Augustan Reprint Society Pubs., San Marino, Calif., 1961).

  Song

  The winter being over,

  In order comes the spring,

  Which doth green herbs discover,

  And cause the birds to sing.

  The night also expired,

  Then comes the morning bright,

  Which is so much desired

  By all that love the light.

  This may learn

  Them that mourn, [10]

  To put their grief to flight:

  The spring succeedeth winter,

  And day must follow night.

  He therefore that sustaineth

  Affliction or distress,

  Which every member paineth,

  And findeth no release:

  Let such therefore despair not,

  But on firm hope depend,

  Whose griefs immortal are not,

  And therefore must have end.

  They that faint

  With complaint

  Therefore are to blame:

  They add to their afflictions,

  And amplify the same.

  Another Song*

  The winter of my infancy being over-past

  I then supposed, suddenly the spring would haste

  Which useth everything to cheer

  With invitation to recreation

  This time of year.

  The sun sends forth his radiant beams to warm the ground,

  The drops distil, between the gleams delights abound,

  Ver brings her mate the flowery queen,

  The groves she dresses, her art expresses

  On ev’ry green. [10]

  But in my spring it was not so, but contrary,

  For no delightful flowers grew to please the eye,

  No hopeful bud, nor fruitful bough,

  No mod’rate showers which causeth flowers

  To spring and grow.

  My April was exceeding dry, therefore unkind;

  Whence ’tis that small utility I look to find,

  For when that April is so dry

  (As hath been spoken) it doth betoken

  Much scarcity. [20]

  Thus is my spring now almost past in heaviness

  The sky of my pleasure’s over-cast with sad distress

  For by a comfortless eclipse

  Disconsolation and sore vexation,

  My blossom nips.

  Yet as a garden is my mind enclosed fast

  Being to safety so confined from storm and blast

  Apt to produce a fruit most rare,

  That is not common with ev’ry woman

  That fruitful are. [30]

  A love of goodness is the chiefest plant therein

  The second is, (for to be brief) dislike to sin.

  These grow in spite of misery,

  Which Grace doth nourish and ease to flourish

  Continually.

  But evil motions, corrupt seeds, fall here also

  Whence spring profaneness as do weeds where flowers grow

  Which must supplanted be with speed

  These weeds of error, distrust and terror,

  Lest woe succeed. [40]

  So shall they not molest, the plants before expressed

  Which countervails these outward wants, and purchase rest

  Which more commodious is for me

  Than outward pleasures or earthly treasures

  Enjoyed would be.

  My little hopes of worldly gain I fret not at,

  As yet I do this hope retain; though spring be late

  Perhaps my summer-age may be,

  Not prejudicial, but beneficial

  Enough for me. [50]

  Admit the worst, if it be not so, but stormy too,

  I’ll learn my self to undergo more than I do

  And still content my self with this

  Sweet meditation and contemplation

  Of heav’nly bliss,

  Which for the saints reserved is who persevere

  In piety and holiness, and godly fear,

  The pleasures of which bliss divine

  Neither logician nor rhetorician

  Can e’er define. [60]

  MARGARET CAVENDISH DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE 1624?–1674

  ‘All I desire is Fame’, she wrote in her first published volume. Eighth child of Sir Thomas Lucas of Colchester, who died in her infancy, and Elizabeth, daughter of John Leighton; patchily educated. After the outbreak of the Civil War went to Court as Maid of Honour to Queen Henrietta Maria, accompanying her into exile in Paris. There, in 1645, married William Cavendish, Marquis (later Duke) of Newcastle, minor poet and notable former commander in Charles’s army, a widower of fifty-two looking for a young wife and more children; though childless, the marriage was happy. In 1653 published Poems, and Fancies and Philosophicall Fancies, claiming to have first expressed herself in verse because ‘errours might better pass there than in Prose’. After the Restoration, the Cavendishes retired to his Welbeck Abbey estates; she wrote stories, plays, letters, philosophical and scientific speculations, and her husband’s biography, but was better known as an eccentric. Pepys records seeing her in London in 1667, ‘… as I have often heard her described (for all the town talk is nowadays of her extravagancies), with her velvet cap, her hair about her ears, many black patches because of pimples about her mouth, naked necked, without anything about it, and a black juste-au-corps; she seemed to me a very comely woman’. Mary Evelyn found her manners and talk ‘as airy, empty, whimsical, and rambling as her books’, but Virginia Woolf wrote with passionate sympathy: ‘What could bind, tame or civilise for human use that wild, generous, untutored intelligence? … What a vision of loneliness and riot the thought of Margaret Cavendish brings to mind! as if some great giant cucumber had spread itself over all the roses and carnations in the garden and choked them to death’.

  Poems, and Fancies London, 1653, rev. ed., 1664; Natures Pictures, 1656; Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader (London: Hogarth Press, 1925); A Room of One’s Own (London: Hogarth Press, 1929); Sara Heller Mendelson, The Mental World of Stuart Women (Brighton: Harvester, 1987); Kathleen Jones, A Glorious Fame, (London: Bloomsbury, 1988).

  An Excuse for so much writ upon my Verses*

  Condemn me not for making such a coil

  About my book, alas it is my child.

  Just like a bird, when her young are in nest,

  Goes in, and out, and hops, and takes no rest;

  But when their young are fledged, their heads out peep,

  Lord what a chirping does the old one keep.

  So I, for fear my strengthless child should fall

  Against a door, or stool, aloud I call,

  Bid have a care of such a dangerous place:

  Thus write I much, to hinder all disgrace. [10]

  ‘A poet I am neither born, nor bred’

  A Poet I am neither born, nor bred,

  But to a witty poet married:

  Whose brain is fresh, and pleasant, as the spring,

  Where fancies grow, and where the Muses sing.

  There oft I lean my head, and list’ning hark,

  To hear his words, and all his fancies mark;

  And from that garden
flowers of fancies take,

  Whereof a posy up in verse I make.

  Thus I, that have no garden of mine own,

  There gather flowers that are newly blown [10]

  Of the Theam of Love

  O Love, how thou art tired out with rhyme!

  Thou art a tree whereon all poets climb;

  And from thy branches every one takes some

  Of thy sweet fruit, which fancy feeds upon.

  But now thy tree is left so bare, and poor,

  That they can hardly gather one plum more.

  Natures Cook*

  Death is the cook of Nature; and we find

  Meat dressed several ways to please her mind.

  Some meats she roasts with fevers, burning hot,

  And some she boils with dropsies in a pot.

  Some for jelly consuming by degrees,

  And some with ulcers, gravy out to squeeze.

  Some flesh as sage she stuffs with gouts, and pains,

  Others for tender meat hangs up in chains.

  Some in the sea she pickles up to keep,

  Others, as brawn is soused, those in wine steep. [10]

  Some with the pox, chops flesh, and bones so small,

  Of which she makes a French fricasse withal.

  Some on gridirons of calentures is broiled,

  And some is trodden on, and so quite spoiled.

  But those are baked, when smothered they do die,

  By hectic fevers some meat she doth fry.

  In sweat sometimes she stews with savoury smell,

  A hodge-podge of diseases tasteth well.

  Brains dressed with apoplexy to Nature’s wish,

  Or swims with sauce of megrims in a dish. [20]

  And tongues she dries with smoke from stomachs ill,

  Which as the second course she sends up still.

  Then Death cuts throats, for blood-puddings to make,

  And puts them in the guts, which colics rack.