Poetry By English Women
Page 23
Swept by desire.
Lo, maidens to the maidens then are born,
Strong children of the maidens and the breeze,
Dreams are not – in the glory of the morn,
Seen through the gates of ivory and horn –
More fair than these. [30]
And none may find their dwelling. In the shade
Primeval of the forest oaks they hide.
One of our race, lost in an awful glade,
Saw with his human eyes a wild white maid,
And gazing, died.
Notes
Written with a Diamond
Queen Elizabeth was confined in Woodstock Palace 1554–5
1 by meaning of
The Doubt of Future Foes
11 daughter of debate Mary Queen of Scots
On Monsieur’s Departure
Probably referring to the visit of the Duc d’Alençon (1582), a disappointed suitor
Wyll and Testament
42 Sumptuary laws required people to dress according to status
45 Cheap Cheapside, near St Paul’s
51 purl thread twisted with gold or silver
53 bongraces cloth shades for protection from the sun
64 gardes ornamental borders
65, 66 artillery, dagges guns
71 handsome men … wed apprentices
88 sessions Justice of the Peace’s court
94 … got the sum prisoners had to pay discharge fees
111 Smithfield site of a weekly market, and of St Bartholomew’s Fair
116 neat oxen
117 Spital hospital of St Bartholomew, near Smithfield
119 Bedlam St Mary of Bethlehem’s asylum for the insane
123 Bridewell workhouse
128 Inns of Court lawyers’ colleges
159 standish inkstand
Psalm 58: Si Vere Utique
13 aspic the poisonous asp
Psalm 139: Domine, Probasti
6 closet a small study-room
55 brave handsome
The Description of Cooke-ham
The Manor of Cookham, near Maidenhead
2 that Grace Her Grace, Margaret, Countess of Cumberland
31 Philomela the nightingale
64 defended Phoebus protected against the sun
93 sweet Lady Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset and friend of Lady Mary Wroth
112 conster construe, analyse
Sonnets from Pamphilia to Amphilanthus: 68
5 Goodwins Goodwin Sands, off the Kentish coast
The Prologue
8 Great Bartas Guillaume Du Bartas, author of an epic poem on Christian history
14 consort concert
19 sweet-tongued Greek Greek orator Demosthenes, who overcame a speech defect
25 obnoxious vulnerable
32 those nine the muses
A Letter to her Husband
Simon Bradstreet was a member of the General Court at Boston
4 Ipswich forty miles north of Boston
12 Capricorn the sun is in Capricorn in mid-winter
21 Cancer Cancer is the first sign of summer
Another Song
8 Ver spring
60 conjectured: the last line is missing
An excuse for so much writ upon my Verses
1 coil fuss
Natures Cook
11 pox small-pox might leave the skin minced-looking, but French suggests syphilis
13 calentures delirious fevers
20 megrims migraines
A Dissert
4 marchpane marzipan
9 green-sickness adolescent anaemia
Of the Animal Spirits
These were subtle, refined substances, believed to permeate and animate the body and blood.
The Fort or Castle of Hope
9 pia-mater membrane enclosing the brain
Friendship’s Mystery, to my dearest Lucasia
The dedicatee was Anne Lewis, later Owen, named for a character in William Cartwright’s play The Lady Errant (1636)
Epitaph on her Son H.P.
He died in 1655.
16 Hermes’ seal Hermetic seal, named for Hermes Trismegistus, derived from the Egyptian god associated with alchemy
Lucasia, Rosania and Orinda parting at a Fountain, July 1663
Possibly mis-dated or fictitious. ‘Rosania’, a childhood friend, Mary Aubrey, became ‘apostate’ by marrying in 1652; ‘Lucasia’ married, and moved to Ireland in 1662
The Disappointment
122 the Delphic god Apollo, god of poetry
129 her love was slain Adonis, killed by a boar
To Alexis in Answer to his Poem against Fruition
The title refers to the preceding poem in the collection Lycidus.
5 beboches trivial vanities?
To the fair Clarinda
23 the union of Hermes and Aphrodite (here three syllables) produced the hermaphrodite
To a Proud Beauty
20 nice foolishly affected; kind unsophisticated
In the Person of a Lady
37 and then text reads ‘than’
On a picture Painted by her self
1 Diana goddess of chastity and hunting
Upon the saying that my verses were made by another
12 holocaust burnt offering
24 empale surround
35 Aesop’s painted jay in one of Aesop’s fables, a jay dresses in peacock’s feathers, and is mobbed by other birds
47 Orinda Katherine Philips
63 Cassandra cursed by Apollo, so that her prophecies would not be believed
The Introduction
25 glad day the Israelites’ celebration of the bringing of the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem
35 bright chorus the Israelite women greeted the victorious David with songs
45 a woman here the judge Deborah led the Israelites to victory, and then composed a triumph song
The Spleen
2 Proteus the shape-changing sea-god
The Unequal Fetters
18 Hymen the god of marriage
A Nocturnal Reverie
19 Salisbury Anne Tufton, Countess of Salisbury
The Female Advocate
1 How canst thou think referring to Robert Gould, in Love Giv’n O’re (1682)
The Liberty
8 round circle necromancer’s chalk circle, drawn to confine spirits
34 closet small study
36 old romance, The Seven Champions of Christendom
42 Probatum est note of efficacy of medicine
The Emulation
12 Pentateuch the first five books of the Old Testament
36 ten celestial females presumably the nine muses and their mother, Mnemosyne
37 two gods Apollo and Dionysus
To one that persuades me to leave the Muses
4 Hundred’s parish rate or tax
41 Japan Japan-work, painting or enamelling
42 glass hand-painted mirrors
A Paraphrase on the Canticles: II
31 Pindarics the irregular odes of Pindar
Six Town Eclogues
19 the Ring in Hyde Park, used for social parade
21 Lilly, Motteux shopkeepers
34 overseen the card underwritten her next bet
66 pomatums ointments
75 Galen named for the famous classical physician
77 Machaon named for the doctor-hero of Garth’s poem The Dispensary (1699)
The Lover
2 Molly her friend May Skerrett, Sir Robert Walpole’s mistress
‘Between your sheets’
10 Lindamira Francesco Algarotti
The Womans Labour
1 Immortal Bard! Stephen Duck, to whose The Thresher’s Labour this is a response
2 Caroline Queen Caroline, who gave him a pension
34 Alcides’ labours labours of Hercules
234 wort liquid for brewing
Fair and Softly goes far
34 Eringo roots sea-hol
ly root, believed to be an aphrodisiac
56 cunctando delaying
76 Richard Blackmore, poet and physician, and Sir Hans Soane, physician
93 Grotius seventeenth-century scholar
111 Warwick-lane centre of the medical profession
The Sacrifice
16 Parnassian deities Mount Parnassus was sacred to the nine Muses
Mira’s Will
27 virtuoso the learned, especially in the arts
An Epistle to Lady Bowyer
16 rappee a coarse kind of snuff
26 Cornus Pope’s name for a cuckold
44 Maid of Honour the Honourable Miss Lovelace (Mary Jones’s note)
Washing-Day
2 the buskined step the tragic mode
38 Erebus the classical underworld
82 the Montgolfier brothers invented the balloon; first flight in 1783
The Rights of Woman
Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Women was published in 1792
Verses Inviting Mrs C— to Tea
34 ‘See the Dying Indian in Dodsley’s poems: “The dart of Isdabel prevails! ‘twas dipt/In double poison”.’ (Scott’s note)
40 bitter tea the Boston ‘Tea-Party’, 1773
41 Ate spirit of malevolence or vengeance
52 ‘Alluding to Captain Donellan’s murder of Sir Theodosius Bough ton by laurel-water’ (Scott’s note)
Colebrook Dale
6 them Naiads, water-nymphs
10 Sabrina spirit of the River Severn
12 Cyclops Vulcan’s malformed foundry-man
50 ponderous metal iron ore
Invocation, to the Genius of Slumber
8 Honora Sneyd, her adopted sister, d.1781
54 drawing a silhouette
The Bas Bleu
22 orgeat cooling drink of almonds and orange-flower water
The Riot
76 mittimus a prison warrant
Thirty-eight
44 myrtle sacred to Venus
46 amaranth legendary unfading flower
47 Minerva goddess of wisdom
Recreation
47 the Duke of Brunswick died fighting Napoleon at Quatre Bras, 1815
Sonnets from the Portuguese: V
2 see Sophocles’ Electra; a guilty memory of her brother Edward, drowned in 1840
12 Beloved the poet Robert Browning
To George Sand
The pseudonym of Amandine Dupin, Baronne Dudevant (1804–76), French writer and feminist
Casa Guidi Windows
Casa Guidi was the Brownings’ home in Florence, whence she watched the uprising against the Duke, 1849
Stanzas
This poem is sometimes attributed to Charlotte Brontë
High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire
28 melic a pasture grass
In an Artist’s Studio
The artist is Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the model is Elizabeth Siddal
Among His Books
34 Elzevir family of Dutch printers, issued beautiful editions of the classics 1592–1681
35 Aldine from the Venetian printer Aldus Manutius, who specialized in the Greek and Roman classics in the late fifteenth-early sixteenth centuries
Index of First Lines
A dappled sky, a world of meadows 217
A doctor, of great skill and fame 139
Again I find myself alone, and ever 206
Ah hapless sex! who bear no charms 84
Ah no! not these 242
Alas! my Purse! how lean and low 154
All things within this fading world hath end 53
Along the graceless grass of town 242
A milk-white hair-lace wound up all her hairs 64
Amyntas led me to a grove 78
And call ye this to utter what is just 33
And has the remnant of my life 184
A Poet I am neither born, nor bred 62
A silent room – grey with a dusty blight 245
A slanting ray of evening light 190
At length by so much importunity pressed 125
At thy approach, my cheek with blushes glows 113
At your entreaty, I at last have writ 91
Aurelia, when your zeal makes known 144
Between your sheets you soundly sleep 128
Blasphemous wretch! How canst thou think or say 108
Brief, in a flying night 243
By day she woos me, soft, exceeding fair 227
Cold in the earth and the deep snow piled above thee 213
Come, my Lucasia, since we see 70
Come, neighbours, no longer be patient and quiet 170
Come to me in the silence of the night 228
Condemn me not for making such a coil 62
Could we stop the time that’s flying 105
Dear Stella, ’mid the pious sorrow 161
Death is the cook of Nature; and we find 63
Deep, and silent, and wide 237
Did I boast of liberty 50
Did I intend my lines for public view 99
Does the road wind up-hill all the way 230
Down a broad river of the western wilds 195
Dream that stole o’er us in the time 208
Fair lovely maid, or if that title be 85
False hope, which feeds but to destroy, and spill 48
Farewell (sweet Cookeham) where I first obtained 39
Forbear, bold youth, all Heaven’s here 73
Forgo the Muses! No, in spite 116
Friendship, as some sage poet sings 175
Great Nature she doth clothe the soul within 64
Green is the plane-tree in the square 250
Grey the sky, and growing dimmer 235
Here, here are our enjoyments done 75
Her even lines her steady temper show 156
High waving heather ’neath stormy blasts bending 211
How far are they deceived, that hope in vain 93
How like her! But ’tis she herself 251
How long, great God, a wretched captive here 115
How much of paper’s spoiled! what floods of ink 151
I ask not wit, nor beauty do I crave 137
I can’t, Celinda, say, I love 114
I did not live until this time 72
I grieve and dare not show my discontent 21
I heard last night a little child go singing 199
I lift my heavy heart up solemnly 197
I must not think of thee; and, tired yet strong 240
I once was happy, when while yet a child 175
I sat before my glass one day 252
I think I see my father’s sister stand 200
I think of thee! – my thoughts do twine and bud 198
I would not be the Moon, the sickly thing 254
If ever two were one, then surely we 53
If you, dear Celia, cannot bear 146
Immortal Bard! thou fav’rite of the Nine 129
Imperious fool! think not because you’re fair 92
Imprimis – My departed shade I trust 149
In early youth’s unclouded scene 176
In silent night when rest I took 55
In such a night, when every tender wind 106
In through the porch and up the silent stair 251
It’s a weary life, it is, she said 227
Led by the pow’r of grief, to wailings brought 46
Long was Society o’er-run 168
Look into thought and say what thou dost see 208
Loss, my molester, at last patient be 50
Love in fantastic triumph sat 77
Lying is an occupation 138
Much suspected by me 19
My head, my heart, mine eyes, my life, nay more 54
My heart is like a singing bird 229
My pain, still smothered in my grieved breast 48
My window, framed in pear-tree bloom 248
Nay, Doll, quoth Roger, now you’re caught 138
Next Heaven my vows to thee (O sacred Muse!) 97
No coward soul is mine 214
No crooked leg, no bleared eye 20
No more alone sleeping, no more alone waking 256
No time, no room, no thought, or writing can 49
O Love, how thou art tired out with rhyme 62
O lovely thing 34
O Lord in me there lieth naught 36
O, thy bright eyes must answer now 211
Often rebuked, yet always back returning 215
Oh, baby, baby, baby dear 244
Oh, fortune, thy wresting wavering state 19
Oh where are you going with your love-locks flowing 230
One day the amorous Lysander 79
One face looks out from all his canvases 229
One wept whose only child was dead 241