Poetry By English Women Read online

  Some hunted are by Death, for deer that’s red.

  Or stall-fed oxen, knocked on the head.

  Some for bacon by Death are singed, or scaled,

  Then powdered up with phlegm, and rheum that’s salt.

  A Dissert*

  Sweet marmalade of kisses new gathered,

  Preserved children that are not fathered:

  Sugar of beauty which melts away soon,

  Marchpane of youth, and childish macaroon.

  Sugar-plum words most sweet on the lips,

  And wafer promises, which waste into chips.

  Biscuit of love, which crumbles all away,

  Jelly of fear, that quaking, quivering lay.

  Then came in a fresh green-sickness cheese,

  And tempting apples, like those eat by Eve; [10]

  With cream of honour, thick and good,

  Firm nuts of friendship by it stood.

  Grapes of delight, dull spirits to revive,

  Whose juice, ‘tis said, doth Nature keep alive.

  Then Nature rose, when eat, and drank her fill,

  To rest her self in ease, she’s pleased with still.

  Soule, and Body

  Great Nature she doth clothe the soul within,

  A fleshly garment which the Fates do spin.

  And when these garments are grown old, and bare,

  With sickness torn, Death takes them off with care.

  And folds them up in peace, and quiet rest,

  So lays them safe within an earthly chest.

  Then scours them, and makes them sweet, and clean,

  Fit for the soul to wear those clothes again.

  A Woman drest by Age

  A milk-white hair-lace wound up all her hairs,

  And a deaf coif did cover both her ears,

  A sober countenance about her face she ties,

  And a dim sight doth cover half her eyes,

  About her neck a kercher of coarse skin,

  Which Time had crumpled, and worn creases in,

  Her gown was turned to melancholy black,

  Which loose did hang upon her sides and back,

  Her stockings cramps had knit, red worsted gout,

  And pains as garters tied her legs about.

  A pair of palsy gloves her hands drew on,

  With weakness stitched, and numbness trimmed upon.

  Her shoes were corns, and hard skin sewed together,

  Hard skin were soles, and corns the upper leather.

  A mantle of diseases laps her round,

  And thus she’s dressed, till Death lays her in ground.

  Of the Animal Spirits*

  Those spirits which we Animal do call,

  May men, and women be, and creatures small;

  And in the body, kingdoms may divide,

  As nerves, muscles, veins, and arteries wide.

  The head, and heart, East and West Indies be,

  Which through the veins may traffic, as the sea:

  In fevers great by shipwreck many dies,

  For when the blood is hot, and vapours rise

  On boiling pulse, as waves they toss, if hit

  Against hard rock of great obstructions, split. [10]

  Head the East Indies, where spicy fancy grows,

  From oranges and lemons sharp satire flows;

  The heart the West, where heat the blood refines,

  Which blood is gold, and silver heart the mines.

  Those from the head in ships their spice they fetch,

  And from the heart the gold and silver rich.

  A Dialogue betwixt the Body and the Mind

  Body: What bodies else but Man’s did Nature make,

  To join with such a mind, no rest can take;

  That ebbs, and flows, with full, and falling tide,

  As minds dejected fall, or swell with pride:

  In waves of passion roll to billows high,

  Always in motion, never quiet lie.

  Where thoughts like fishes swim the mind about,

  Where the great thoughts the smaller thoughts eat out.

  My body the barque rows in mind’s ocean wide,

  Whose waves of passions beat on every side. [10]

  When that dark cloud of ignorance hangs low,

  And winds of vain opinions strong do blow;

  Then showers of doubts into the mind rain down,

  In deep vast studies my barque of flesh is drowned.

  Mind: Why doth the body thus complain, when I

  Do help it forth of every misery?

  For in the world your barque is bound to swim,

  Nature hath rigged it out to traffic in.

  Against hard rocks you break in pieces small,

  If my invention help you not in all. [20]

  The lodestone of attraction I find out,

  The card of observation guides about.

  The needle of discretion points the way,

  Which makes your barque get safe into each bay.

  Body: If I’ scape drowning in the wat’ry main,

  Yet in great mighty battles I am slain.

  By your ambition I am forced to fight,

  When many winds upon my body light.

  For you care not, so you a fame may have,

  To live, if I be buried in a grave. [30]

  Mind: If bodies fight, and kingdoms win, then you

  Take all the pleasure that belongs thereto.

  You have a crown, your head for to adorn,

  Upon your body jewels are hung on.

  All things are sought, to please your senses five,

  No drug unpractised, to keep you alive.

  And I, to set you up in high degree,

  Invent all engines used in war to be.

  ’Tis I that make you in great triumph sit,

  Above all other creatures high to get: [40]

  By the industrious arts, which I do find,

  You other creatures in subjection bind:

  You eat their flesh, and after that their skin,

  When winter comes, you lap your bodies in.

  And so of every thing that Nature makes,

  By my direction you great pleasure takes.

  Body: What though my senses all do take delight,

  Yet you my entrails always bite.

  My flesh eat up, that all my bones are bare,

  With the sharp teeth of sorrow, grief and care. [50]

  Draws out my blood from veins, with envious spite,

  Decays my strength with shame, or extreme fright.

  With love extremely sick I lie,

  With cruel hate you make me die.

  Mind: Care keeps you from all hurt, or falling low,

  Sorrow, and grief are debts to friends we owe.

  Fear makes men just, to give each one his own,

  Shame makes civility, without there’s none.

  Hate makes good laws, that all may live in peace,

  Love brings society, and gets increase. [60]

  Besides, with joy I make the eyes look gay,

  With pleasing smiles they dart forth everyway.

  With mirth the cheeks are fat, smooth, rosy-red,

  Your speech flares wit, when fancies fill the head.

  If I were gone, you’d miss the company,

  Wish we were joined again, or you might die.

  from the battle episode in The Fort or Castle of Hope*

  Some with sharp swords, to tell O most accursed!

  Were above half into their bodies thrust,

  From whence fresh streams of blood along did run

  Unto the hilts and there lay clodded on;

  Some, their legs dangling by the nervous strings

  And shoulders cut loose like flying wings;

  Heads were cleft in pieces, brains lay mashed

  And all their faces into slices hashed;

  Brains only in the pia-mater thin

  Did quivering lie within that little skin; [10]

  Their skulls, all broke an
d into pieces burst,

  By horses’ hoofs and chariot wheels crushed.

  Others, their heads did lie on their own laps,

  And some again, half cut, lay on their paps;

  Some thrust their tongues out of their mouths at length,

  For why, the strings were cut that gave them strength.

  Their eyes did stare, their lids were open wide,

  For the small nerves were shrunk on every side.

  In some again those glassy balls hung by

  Small slender strings, as chains, to tie the eye, [20]

  Which strings when broke, the eyes fell trundling round,

  And then the film was broke upon the ground.

  In death their teeth strong set, their lips were bare,

  Which grinning seemed as if they angry were;

  Their hair upon their eyes in clodded gore

  So wildly spread as ne’er it did before;

  With frowns their foreheads did in furrows lie

  As graves, their foes to bury when they die.

  Their spongy lungs, heaved up through pangs of death,

  With pain and difficulty fetched short breath; [30]

  Some grasping hard their hands through pain provoked

  Because the rattling phlegm their throats had choked.

  Their bodies now bowed up, then down did fall

  For want of strength to make them stand withal;

  Some staggering on their legs did feebly stand,

  Or leaning on their sword with either hand

  Where on the pommel did their breast rely,

  More grieved they could not fight than for to die […]

  A Discourse of Beasts

  Who knows, but beasts, as they do lie,

  In meadows low, or else on mountains high,

  But that they do contemplate on the sun,

  And how his daily, yearly circles run.

  Whether the sun about the earth doth rove

  Or else the earth upon its own poles move.

  And in the night, when twinkling stars we see,

  Like Man, imagines them all suns to be:

  And may like Man, stars, planets number well,

  And could they speak, they might their motions tell. [10]

  And how the planets in each orb do move:

  ‘Gainst their astrology can no man prove.

  For they may know the stars, and their aspects,

  What influence they cast, and their effects.

  KATHERINE PHILIPS 1631–1664

  Dubbed by her admirers ‘The Matchless Orinda’, and usually compared favourably with Aphra Behn (‘The Incomparable Astraea’), if only on grounds of morality and professed modesty (though she knew ‘everybody’); ‘very good-natured; not at all high-minded; pretty fatt; not tall; red pumpled face; wrote out Verses in Innes, or Mottos in windowes, in her table-booke’, wrote Aubrey. The daughter of a successful London merchant, John Fowler, and his second wife, Katherine Oxenbridge, who herself remarried a Parliamentarian baronet, Sir Richard Philips, in 1646; in 1648 was married to James Philips, aged 54, a widower kinsman of her stepfather; bore two children. Despite her Puritan family, she had Royalist sympathies, and developed connections with Cavalier circles that after the Restoration, which ruined her husband, were (possibly literally) life-savers. Developed intense Platonic-romantic relationships with various young ladies, and a cult of friendship. Her translation of Corneille’s La Mort de Pompée in 1663 made her reputation; four acts through translating his Horace she contracted small-pox, and died in London.

  Poems, By the Most Deservedly Admired Mrs. Katherine Philips, The Matchless Orinda (London, 1667); G. Saintsbury (ed.), The Caroline Poets, Vol.I (Oxford: Clarendon, 1905); Philip Souers, The Matchless Orinda (Cambridge, Mass, 1931); Lillian Federman, Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present (NY: William Morrow, 1981).

  Friendship’s Mystery, to my dearest Lucasia*

  I

  Come, my Lucasia, since we see

  That miracles men’s faith do move,

  By wonder and by prodigy

  To the dull angry world let’s prove

  There’s a religion in our love.

  II

  For though we were designed t’agree,

  That fate no liberty destroys,

  But our election is as free

  As angels’, who with greedy choice

  Are yet determined to their joys. [10]

  III

  Our hearts are doubled by the loss,

  Here mixture is addition grown;

  We both diffuse, and both ingross:

  And we whose minds are so much one,

  Never, yet ever are alone.

  IV

  We court our own captivity

  Than thrones more great and innocent:

  ’Twere banishment to be set free,

  Since we wear fetters whose intent

  Not bondage is but ornament. [20]

  V

  Divided joys are tedious found,

  And griefs united easier grow;

  We are ourselves but by rebound,

  And all our titles shuffled so,

  Both princes, and both subjects too.

  VI

  Our hearts are mutual victims laid,

  While they (such power in friendship lies)

  Are altars, priests, and off’rings made:

  And each heart which thus kindly dies,

  Grows deathless by the sacrifice. [30]

  To my Excellent Lucasia, on our Friendship

  I did not live until this time

  Crowned my felicity,

  When I could say without a crime,

  I am not thine, but thee.

  This carcase breathed, and walked, and slept,

  So that the world believed

  There was a soul the motions kept;

  But they were all deceived.

  For as a watch by art is wound

  To motion, such was mine: [10]

  But never had Orinda found

  A soul till she found thine;

  Which now inspires, cures and supplies,

  And guides my darkened breast:

  For thou art all that I can prize,

  My joy, my life, my rest.

  No bridegroom’s nor crown-conqueror’s mirth

  To mine compared can be:

  They have but pieces of this earth,

  I’ve all the world in thee. [20]

  Then let our flames still light and shine,

  And no false fear control,

  As innocent as our design,

  Immortal as our soul.

  An Answer to another persuading a Lady to marriage

  I

  Forbear, bold youth, all’s Heaven here,

  And what you do aver,

  To others courtship may appear,

  ’Tis sacrifice to her.

  II

  She is a public deity,

  And were’t not very odd

  She should depose herself to be

  A petty household god?

  III

  First make the sun in private shine,

  And bid the world adieu, [10]

  That so he may his beams confine

  In compliment to you.

  IV

  But if of that you do despair,

  Think how you did amiss,

  To strive to fix her beams, which are

  More bright and large than his.

  To the Queen of Inconstancy, Regina Collier, in Antwerp

  I

  Unworthy, since thou hast decreed

  Thy love and honour both shall bleed,

  My friendship could not choose to die

  In better time or company.

  II

  What thou hast got by this exchange

  Thou wilt perceive, when the revenge

  Shall by those treacheries be made,

  For which our faith thou hast betrayed.

  III<
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  When thy idolators shall be

  True to themselves, and false to thee, [10]

  Thou’lt see that in heart-merchandise,

  Value, not number, makes the price.

  IV

  Live, to that day, my innocence

  Shall be my friendship’s just defence:

  For this is all the world can find,

  While thou wert noble, I was kind.

  V

  The desp’rate game that thou dost play

  At private ruins cannot stay:

  The horrid treachery of that face

  Will sure undo its native place. [20]

  VI

  Then let the Frenchmen never fear

  The victory while thou art there;

  For if sins will call judgements down,

  Thou hast enough to stock the town.

  Epitaph on her Son H.P.* at St Syth’s Church, where her body also lies interred

  What on earth deserves our trust?

  Youth and beauty both are dust.

  Long we gathering are with pain,

  What one moment calls again.

  Seven years’ childless marriage past,

  A son, a son is born at last:

  So exactly limbed and fair,

  Full of good spirits, mien, and air,

  As a long life promised,

  Yet, in less than six weeks dead. [10]

  Too promising, too great a mind

  In so small room to be confined:

  Therefore, as fit in Heav’n to dwell,

  He quickly broke the prison shell.

  So the subtle alchemist

  Can’t with Hermes’ seal resist