On Monday, September 19, people throughout the world watched the funeral of Great Britain’s beloved Queen Elizabeth II. Her reign of 70 years was the longest in British history.
She was 25 years old when she was crowned at Westminster Abbey in 1953. And it reminds us of another Queen Elizabeth, the first, who was 25 years old when she was crowned in Westminster Abbey in 1559. She ruled for 45 years. Of special interest to this column is the remarkable quality of the poetry written during both their reigns. Think Shakespeare and Spenser. Then fast forward to the master of modern poetry, T.S. Eliot. And so many wonderful supporting poets in both eras.
* * *
Let’s first visit Elizabeth I in what has been called The Golden Age. The aforementioned Shakespeare and Spenser will be performed in our video but we should meet some of the other fine writers. It was an age when professional soldiers like Sir Philip Sidney and explorer/statesmen like Sir Walter Raleigh were also fine poets. Here is a lovely sonnet by Sidney. He called it “The Bargain.”
My true-love hath my heart and I have his,
By just exchange one for the other given:
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss;
There never was a bargain better driven.
His heart in me keeps me and him in one;
My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides:
He loves my heart, for once it was his own;
I cherish his because in me it bides.
His heart his wound receivèd from my sight;
My heart was wounded with his wounded heart;
For as from me on him his hurt did light,
So still, methought, in me his hurt did smart:
Both equal hurt, in this change sought our bliss,
My true love hath my heart and I have his.
One of significant poets of the First Elizabethan Period was John Donne (1572-1631) He was not attached to the Court but went into the priesthood and eventually became Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral. His influence from this period on later poets was second only to Shakespeare’s.
Here is his grand poem on the inconstancy of women, the philosophy of which, I’m quick to say, I don’t endorse lest I never again get a dinner invitation from my lady friends.
Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil’s foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy’s stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.
If thou be’st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee
Thou, when thou return’st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear,
No where
Lives a woman true, and fair.
If thou find’st one, let me know,
Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not, I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet;
Though she were true, when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three.
* * *
Michael Drayton (1563-1631) was much favored at the Court of Elizabeth and wrote abundantly, often on historical matters. As a friend of Shakespeare’s, he was present at a tavern gathering which may or may not be factual as described by the Vicar of Stratford: “Shakespeare, Drayton and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting and, it seems, drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted.”
Drayton’s poems figured as inspirations for two modern endeavors. H. E. Bates wrote a popular novel named for the wonderful first line of this Drayton poem called “Agincourt.”Fair stood the wind for France
When we our sails advance,
Nor now to prove our chance
Longer will tarry;
But putting to the main,
At Caux, the mouth of Seine,
With all his martial train
Landed King Harry.
And with a bow to Shakespeare’s Henry V:
Upon Saint Crispin’s Day
Fought was this noble fray,
Which fame did not delay
To England to carry.
O when shall English men
With such acts fill a pen?
Or England breed again
Such a King Harry?
Another Michael Drayton poem, “To the Virginia Voyage,” inspired the writer of this column to exercise the musical part of his life and write a “Jamestown Concerto for Cello and Orchestra” celebrating the 400th anniversary of the founding of the Jamestown Colony.
Britons, you stay too long;
Quickly aboard bestow you,
And with a merry gale
Swell your stretched sail
With vowels as strong
As the winds that blow you.
And cheerfully at sea
Success you still entice
To get the pearl and gold,
And ours to hold
VIRGINIA,
Earth’s only paradise.
The Berkshires’ own Yehuda Hanani of Close Encounters With Music premiered the concerto and later recorded it for Naxos Records.
* * *
Turning now to Queen Elizabeth II, we salute three poets who were esteemed during her 70-year reign.
First, we must recognize the finest British poet of the Second Elizabethan Period, T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), who was born in America but chose to become a British citizen in 1927. His poem, “The Wasteland” is thought to be his most significant poem, but “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is probably the most popular. (Well, maybe not if you consider that his verses about Cats became the basis of the long-running Broadway musical!) In our video, T.S. Eliot himself performs the opening and closing sections of “Prufrock.”
* * *
Robert Graves (1895-1985) was a writer of historical novels (“I, Claudius”) and an important war poet. His individuality ranged from classical themes to more modern musings. I like his poem called “A Slice of Wedding Cake” though again, it may threaten my dinner invitations.
Why have such scores of lovely, gifted girls
Married impossible men?
Simple self-sacrifice may be ruled out,
And missionary endeavour, nine times out of ten.
Repeat ‘impossible men’: not merely rustic,
Foul-tempered or depraved
(Dramatic foils chosen to show the world
How well women behave, and always have behaved).
Impossible men: idle, illiterate,
Self-pitying, dirty, sly,
For whose appearance even in City parks
Excuses must be made to casual passers-by.
Has God’s supply of tolerable husbands
Fallen, in fact, so low?
Or do I always over-value woman
At the expense of man?
Do I?
It might be so.
The Queen’s dominion included Wales, so I am happy to honor the great Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas. The magical opening of his play, “Under Milkwood” is not strictly a poem, but it is surpassingly poetic, especially when intoned by fellow-Welshman Richard Burton.
To begin at the beginning:
It is spring, moonless night in the small town,
starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched,
courters’-and-rabbits’ wood limping invisible down to the
sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboatbobbing sea.
The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine to-night
in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat
there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock,
the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows’ weeds.
And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now.
Hush, the babies are sleeping, the farmers, the fishers,
the tradesmen and pensioners, cobbler, schoolteacher,
postman and publican, the undertaker and the fancy woman,
drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, policeman, the webfoot
cocklewomen and the tidy wives. Young girls lie bedded soft
or glide in their dreams, with rings and trousseaux,
bridesmaided by glowworms down the aisles of the
organplaying wood. The boys are dreaming wicked or of the
bucking ranches of the night and the jollyrodgered sea. And
the anthracite statues of the horses sleep in the fields,
and the cows in the byres, and the dogs in the wetnosed
yards; and the cats nap in the slant corners or lope sly,
streaking and needling, on the one cloud of the roofs.
You can hear the dew falling, and the hushed town breathing.
* * *
Before we go to our video, I’d like to share one more poem from Elizabeth I. And I mean that literally. She wrote it. Her collected writings come to 470 pages, many of them poems!
When I was fair and young, then favor graced me.
Of many was I sought their mistress for to be.
But I did scorn them all and answered them therefore:
Go, go, go, seek some other where; importune me no more.
How many weeping eyes I made to pine in woe,
How many sighing hearts I have not skill to show,
But I the prouder grew and still this spake therefore:
Go, go, go, seek some other where, importune me no more.
Then spake fair Venus’ son, that proud victorious boy,
Saying: You dainty dame, for that you be so coy,
I will so pluck your plumes as you shall say no more:
Go, go, go, seek some other where, importune me no more.
As soon as he had said, such change grew in my breast
That neither night nor day I could take any rest.
Wherefore I did repent that I had said before:
Go, go, go, seek some other where, importune me no more.
* * *
VIDEO. Four poems from the reign of Elizabeth I
William Shakespeare: Macbeth. “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” Christopher Marlowe: “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”
Sir Walter Raleigh: The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd
Edmund Spenser: Sonnet LXXV from Amoretti
Three Poems from the Reign of Elizabeth II
Sir John Betjeman: “In Westminster Abbey”
W.H. Auden: “Carry Her Over the Water”
T.S. Eliot: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
* * *
One final note: when the new monarch, King Charles III, first addressed his nation and lamented his mother’s passing, he ended his speech with this Shakespearean quote: “May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.” That’s the son of Elizabeth II quoting the star poet of Elizabeth I. Pretty neat.
CLICK ON THIS LINK FOR VIDEO: THE TWO ELIZABETHS
