Poetry By English Women Read online

  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), Specimens of British Poetesses (London: T. Rodd, 1827).

  J.C. Squire (ed), A Book of Women’s Verse (Oxford: Clarendon, 1921).

  Betty Travitsky (ed), The Paradise of Women: Writings by Englishwomen of the Renaissance (Westport, Conn: Greenwood, 1981).

  Germaine Greer, Jeslyn Medoff, Melinda Sansone and Susan Hastings (eds), Kissing the Rod: An Anthology of Seventeenth Century Women’s Verse, (London: Virago, 1988)

  Dale Spender and Janet Todd (eds), Anthology of British Women Writers, (London: Pandora, 1989).

  Roger Lonsdale (ed), Eighteenth Century Women Poets: An Oxford Anthology, (Oxford: OUP‚ 1989).

  Some recent critical and historical introductions:

  Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar (eds), Shakespeare’s Sisters: Feminist Essays on Women Poets (Bloomington and London: Indiana UP, 1979).

  Elaine Showalter (ed), The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature and Theory (NY: Pantheon, 1985).

  Margaret Homans, Bearing the Word: Language and Female Experience in Nineteenth-Century Women’s Writing (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1986).

  Elaine V. Beilin, Redeeming Eve: Women Writers of the English Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1987).

  Jan Montefiore, Feminism and Poetry: Language, Experience, Identity in Women’s Writing (London and NY: Pandora, 1987).

  Elaine Hobby, Virtue of Necessity: English Women’s Writing 1649–88, (London: Virago, 1988).

  Janet Todd, Feminist Literary History: A Defence (Cambridge: Polity, 1988).

  Janet Todd (ed), Dictionary of British Women Writers (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 (‘Semper eadem, semper una’, as in her motto).

  Leicester Bradner (ed), Poems of Queen Elizabeth I (Providence, R.I: Brown UP, 1964; Paul Johnson, Elizabeth I: A Study of Power and Intellect (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974).

  Written with a Diamond On her Window at Woodstock*

  Much suspected by me,

  Nothing proved can be,

  Quoth Elizabeth prisoner.

  Written on a Wall at Woodstock

  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]

  Written in her French Psalter

  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.

  The Doubt of Future Foes*

  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.

  On Monsieur’s Departure*

  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 Flowers of Philosophie, 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.

  The Copy of a letter, lately written in meeter, by a yonge Gentilwoman: to her unconstant lover (London 1567); A sweet nosegay or pleasant posye. Contayning a hundred and ten Phylosophicall flowres (London, 1573); Betty Travitsky, ‘The “Wyll and Testament” of Isabella Whitney’, English Literary Review 10 (1980) pp.76–95.

  From The admonition by the Auctor to all yong Gentilwomen: And to al other Maids being in Love

  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 Art of Love,

  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.

  Wyll and Testament*

  [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 eve
ry 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,