Ralegh’s career was a turbulent one. He was educated at Oriel College, Oxford; and since his father was an undistinguished country gentleman, he had no ready entrance into the world of affairs; yet by the time he was thirty, after having fought as a soldier in the French wars of religion and in the Irish campaign, he was a favorite in the court of Queen Elizabeth. For the rest of his life he was in the thick of the political intrigue that animated the court of Elizabeth; he explored Guiana, led a successful expedition against Cadiz, was part of the government approved piracy against Spanish treasure ships—and after Elizabeth’s death, in the struggle for power that came with the succession, he was imprisoned and brought to trial upon the charge that he had conspired with Spain to bring England under a Roman Catholic monarchy. The trial was a mockery of justice. Condemned to death, he was spared three days before the date set for his execution. He spent the next thirteen years in prison, during which time he began the History of the World, a work that was to account for the events from the Creation to his own day. He was released from prison in 1616 so that he could lead an expedition to Guiana; but the conditions of his release were impossible. He was ordered to plunder Guiana, then Spanish territory, without giving offense to the Spaniards. The expedition was a dismal failure; Ralegh returned to England in 1618, and was beheaded the same year on the old charge of conspiracy with the Spanish. He met his death with great dignity, and won the sympathy of the populace.
Ralegh was known to his contemporaries as one of the best poets of his day; but few of his poems were published in his lifetime, and he left no manuscript to be printed after his death. The most laborious scholarship has turned up only a most incomplete representation of his total work. Yet the poems we have show Ralegh to be a poet of considerable stature. In poetry as in life he went his own way. He was unaffected by the fashionable Petrarchism; he spoke directly and forcefully; and like the earlier Native poets, with whom he must be counted, he tended to speak personally and individually. Laconic, bitter, and defiant, his voice is one that strangely intimates the enigmatic loneliness of his life.
TEXT:
The Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh, edited by Agnes M. C. Latham (1951).
FAREWELL TO THE COURT
Like truthless dreams, so are my joys expired,
And past return are all my dandled days,
My love misled, and fancy quite retired:
Of all which past, the sorrow only stays.
My lost delights, now clean from sight of land,
Have left me all alone in unknown ways,
My mind to woe, my life in Fortune’s hand:
Of all which past, the sorrow only stays.
As in a country strange without companion,
I only wail the wrong of death’s delays,
Whose sweet spring spent, whose summer well nigh done;
Of all which past, the sorrow only stays:
Whom care forewarns, ere age and winter cold,
To haste me hence to find my fortune’s fold.
Conceit begotten by the eyes
Is quickly born and quickly dies;
For while it seeks our hearts to have,
Meanwhile, there reason makes his grave;
For many things the eyes approve,
Which yet the heart doth seldom love.
For as the seeds in springtime sown
Die in the ground ere they be grown,
Such is conceit, whose rooting fails,
As child that in the cradle quails,
Or else within the mother’s womb
Hath his beginning and his tomb.
Affection follows Fortune’s wheels,
And soon is shaken from her heels;
For, following beauty or estate,
Her liking still is turned to hate;
For all affections have their change,
And fancy only loves to range.
Desire himself runs out of breath,
And, getting, doth but gain his death:
Desire nor reason hath nor rest,
And, blind, doth seldom choose the best:
Desire attained is not desire,
But as the cinders of the fire.
As ships in ports desired are drowned,
As fruit, once ripe, then falls to ground,
As flies that seek for flames are brought
To cinders by the flames they sought:
So fond desire when it attains,
The life expires, the woe remains.
And yet some poets fain would prove
Affection to be perfect love;
And that desire is of that kind,
No less a passion of the mind;
As if wild beasts and men did seek
To like, to love, to choose alike.
NATURE, THAT WASHED HER HANDS IN MILK
Nature, that washed her hands in milk
And had forgot to dry them,
Instead of earth took snow and silk
At Love’s request, to try them
If she a mistress could compose
To please Love’s fancy out of those.
Her eyes he would should be of light,
A violet breath, and lips of jelly,
Her hair not black nor over-bright,
And of the softest down her belly:
As for her inside, he’d have it
Only of wantonness and wit.
At Love’s entreaty, such a one
Nature made, but with her beauty
She hath framed a heart of stone,
So as Love, by ill destiny,
Must die for her whom Nature gave him,
Because her darling would not save him.
But Time, which Nature doth despise,
And rudely gives her love the lie,
Makes hope a fool and sorrow wise,
His hands doth neither wash nor dry,
But, being made of steel and rust,
Turns snow and silk and milk to dust.
The light, the belly, lips and breath,
He dims, discolors, and destroys,
With those he feeds (but fills not) Death
Which sometimes were the food of Joys:
Yea, Time doth dull each lively wit,
And dries all wantonness with it.
O cruel Time, which takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, and all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust;
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days.
THE LIE
Go, Soul, the body’s guest,
Upon a thankless arrant:
Fear not to touch the best;
The truth shall be thy warrant:
Go, since I needs must die,
And give the world the lie.
Say to the court, it glows
And shines like rotten wood;
Say to the church it shows
What’s good, and doth no good:
If church and court reply,
Then give them both the lie.
Tell potentates, they live
Acting by others’ action;
Not loved unless they give,
Not strong but by affection:
If potentates reply,
Give potentates the lie.
That manage the estate,
Their purpose is ambition,
Their practice only hate:
And if they once reply,
Then give them all the lie.
Tell them that brave it most
They beg for more by spending,
Who, in their greatest cost,
Seek nothing but commending:
And if they make reply,
Then give them all the lie.
Tell zeal it wants devotion,
Tell love it is but lust;
Tell time it metes but motion,
Tell flesh it is but dust:
And wish them not reply,
For thou must give the lie.
Tell age it daily wasteth;
Tell honor how it alters;
Tell beauty how she blasteth;
Tell favor how it falters:
Give every one the lie.
Tell wit how much it wrangles
In tickle points of niceness;
Tell wisdom she entangles
Herself in over-wiseness:
And when they do reply,
Straight give them both the lie.
Tell physic of her boldness;
Tell skill it is pretension;
Tell charity of coldness;
Tell law it is contention:
And as they do reply,
So give them still the lie.
Tell fortune of her blindness;
Tell nature of decay;
Tell friendship of unkindness;
Tell justice of delay:
And if they will reply,
Then give them all the lie.
Tell arts they have no soundness,
But vary by esteeming;
Tell schools they want profoundness,
And stand too much on seeming:
If arts and schools reply,
Give arts and schools the lie.
Tell faith it’s fled the city;
Tell how the country erreth;
Tell manhood shakes off pity
And virtue least preferreth:
And if they do reply,
Spare not to give the lie.
So when thou hast, as I
Commanded thee, done blabbing
—Although to give the lie
Deserves no less than stabbing—
Stab at thee he that will,
No stab thy soul can kill.
ON THE CARDS AND DICE
Before the sixth day of the next new year,
Strange wonders in this kingdom shall appear.
Four kings shall be assembled in this isle,
Where they shall keep great tumult for a while.
Many men then shall have an end of crosses,
And many likewise shall sustain great losses.
Many that now full joyful are and glad,
Shall at that time be sorrowful and sad.
Full many a Christian’s heart shall quake for fear,
The dreadful sound of trump when he shall hear.
Dead bones shall then be tumbled up and down,
In every city and in every town.
By day or night this tumult shall not cease,
Until an herald shall proclaim a peace,
An herald strange, the like was never born
Whose very beard is flesh, and mouth is horn.
SIR WALTER RALEGH TO HIS SON
Three things there be that prosper up apace
And flourish, whilst they grow asunder far;
But on a day, they meet all in one place,
And when they meet, they one another mar.
And they be these: the wood, the weed, the wag.
The wood is that which makes the gallow tree;
The weed is that which strings the hangman’s bag;
The wag, my pretty knave, betokeneth thee.
Mark well, dear boy, whilst these assemble not,
Green springs the tree, hemp grows, the wag is wild;
But when they meet, it makes the timber rot,
It frets the halter, and it chokes the child.
Then bless thee, and beware, and let us pray
We part not with thee at this meeting day.
THE PASSIONATE MAN’S PILGRIMAGE
Give me my scallop-shell of quiet,
My staff of faith to walk upon,
My scrip of joy, immortal diet,
My bottle of salvatión,
My gown of glory, hope’s true gage:
And thus I’ll take my pilgrimage.
Blood must be my body’s balmer;
No other balm will there be given,
Whilst my soul, like a white palmer,
Travels to the land of heaven,
Over the silver mountains
Where spring the nectar fountains.
And there I’ll kiss
The bowl of bliss,
And drink my eternal fill
On every milken hill.
My soul will be a-dry before,
But after it will ne’er thirst more.
And by the happy blissful way
More peaceful pilgrims I shall see
That have shook off their gowns of clay
And go apparelled fresh like me.
I’ll bring them first
To slake their thirst
And then to taste those nectar suckets
At the clear wells
Where sweetness dwells,
Drawn up by saints in crystal buckets.
And when our bottles and all we
Are filled with immortality,
Then the holy paths we’ll travel,
Strewed with rubies thick as gravel;
Ceilings of diamonds, sapphire floors,
High walls of coral and pearly bowers.
From thence to heaven’s bribeless hall,
Where no corrupted voices brawl,
No conscience molten into gold,
No forged accusers bought and sold,
No cause deferred, no vain-spent journey—
For there Christ is the King’s Attorney,
Who pleads for all without degrees,
And He hath angels, but no fees.
When the grand twelve million jury
Of our sins and sinful fury
’Gainst our souls black verdicts give,
Christ pleads His death, and then we live,
Be Thou my speaker, taintless pleader,
Unblotted lawyer, true proceeder!
Thou movest salvation even for alms,
Not with a bribëd lawyer’s palms.
And this is my eternal plea
To Him that made heaven, earth, and sea:
Seeing my flesh must die so soon
And want a head to dine next noon,
Just at the stroke, when my veins start and spread,
Set on my soul an everlasting head!
Then am I ready, like a palmer fit,
To tread those blest paths which before I writ.
WHAT IS OUR LIFE?
What is our life? A play of passion,
Our mirth the music of division;
Our mothers’ wombs the tiring houses be,
Where we are dressed for this short comedy;
Heaven the judicious sharp spectator is
That sits and marks still who doth act amiss;
Our graves that hide us from the searching sun
Are like drawn curtains when the play is done.
Thus march we playing to our latest rest—
Only we die in earnest, that’s no jest.
Even such is time, which takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, and all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust;
Who, in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days,
And from which earth and grave and dust,
The Lord shall raise me up, I trust.
EPITAPH ON THE EARL OF LEICESTER
Here lies the noble Warrior that never blunted sword;
Here lies the noble Courtier that never kept his word;
Here lies his Excellency that governed all the state;
Here lies the Lord of Leicester that all the world did hate.
LINES FROM CATULLUS
The sun may set and rise;
But we, contrariwise,
Sleep after our short light
One everlasting night.
angels: lit., small coins; this is a frequently found pun.