Poetry By English Women Read online

  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: Miserere Mei, Deus

  Psalm 58: Si Vere Utique

  Psalm 92: Bonum Est Confiteri

  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 Mom
ent

  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 The Collected Poems of Mary Coleridge, edited by Theresa Whistler (Rupert Hart-Davis, 1954), by permission of the editor.

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

  Mary (Sidney) Herbert: reprinted from The Psalms of Sir Philip Sidney and the Countess of Pembroke, edited by J.C.A. Rathmell, by permission of New York University Press.

  Emilia Lanyer: reprinted from The Poems of Shakespeare’s Dark Lady, edited by A.L. Rowse (Jonathan Cape, 1978), by permission of the editor.

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

  Dorothy Wordsworth: reprinted from Dorothy Wordsworth and Romanticism 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 The Poems of Lady Mary Wroth, 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 g
enre, 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, fin de siele 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).