Music, even domestic music, was policed by officialdom with an intensity that shifted from year to year. The ‘Waldegrave’ manuscript [the main source of Southwell’s English poems] comes out of this confused, anxiety-ridden situation, and Southwell’s lyrics embody the same doubled or occluded messages as the public music of William Byrd. Both witness to the difficulties of balancing faith and obedience in late Elizabethan England.
ANNE SWEENEY: Introduction to St Robert Southwell, Collected Poems (Carcanet Press, 2007)
A member of an old Norfolk family, Southwell was brought up abroad. After a Jesuit education in Douai, Paris and Rome, where he took Roman orders, he came to England in 1586 as part of the Jesuit mission with Father Henry Garnet, who was later executed for complicity in the Gunpowder Plot. He was welcomed by Catholic families and for six years pursued his priestly task at great personal risk, publishing illegal devotional works from his secret printing press and moving about London by night. He had no pulpit and his scattered congregation had no church, but Southwell was aware that his manuscript poems would be copied and readily passed from Catholic community to Catholic community, avoiding the scrutiny of those officials whose duty it was to monitor the presses. He was arrested in 1592 for celebrating mass, repeatedly racked and tortured and finally executed at Tyburn after three years’ imprisonment. Most of his poems were written in prison, including St Peters Complaint (1595), in which the penitent Peter, narrating the last events in the life of Christ, continually contrasts the spiritual with the material. His shorter poems, mostly devotional, were also published in 1595, in Moeoniae. He was beatified in 1929 and canonized in 1970. Though his poems were destined for the persecuted Catholic minority, they exercised a quiet influence on the development of English poetry and were already popular at the time of his death. His last words on the scaffold were ‘In manus tuas, Domine’, which William Byrd, a fellow Catholic, later set to music.
[Come to your heaven yowe heavenly quires
Earth hath the heaven of your desires
Remove your dwellinge to your god
A stall is nowe his best aboade
Sith men their homage doe denye
Come Angells all their fault supply
His chilling could1 doth heate require
Come Seraphins in liew of fire
This little ark no cover hath
Let Cherubs winges his body swath
Come Raphiell this babe must eate
Provide our little Tobie meate.2
Let Gabriell be nowe his groome
That first tooke upp his earthly roome
Let Michell stande in his defence
Whom love hath link’d to feeble sence
Let graces rocke when he doth crye
And Angells sing his Lullybye
The same you saw in heavenly seate
Is he that now suckes Maryes teate
Agnize3 your kinge a mortall wighte
His borrowed weede4 letts not your sight
Come kysse the maunger where he lies
That is your blisse above the Skyes]
This little Babe, so fewe daies olde
Is come to ryfle Satan’s folde
All hell doth at his presence quake
Though he himselfe for cold doe shake
For in this weake unarmed wise
The gates of hell he will surprise.
With tears he fightes and wynnes the feild
His naked breste stands for a Sheilde
His battering shot are babishe cryes,
His Arrowes lookes of weepinge eyes
His Martiall ensignes cold and neede
And feeble fleshe his warriers steede.
His Campe is pitched in a stall
Be His Bulwarke but a broken wall
The Cribbe his trench, hay stalks his staks5
Of Shepeherds he his muster6 makes
And thus as sure his foe to Wounde,
The Angells Trumpes alarum sounde.
My soule with Christ joyn thou in fighte
Sticke to the tents that he hath pight7
Within his Cribb is surest warde
This little Babe will be thy garde.
If thou wilt foyle thy foes with joye
Then flit not from this heavenly boy.
Behold a sely2 tender babe
In freesing Winter nighte
In homely manger trembling lyes
Alas a pitteous sighte
The Inns are full no man will yeld
This little Pilgrime Bedd
But forc’d he is with sely beasts
In Crib to shroude his headd.
[Despise not him for lyinge there
First what he is enquire
An orient3 pearle is often founde
In depth of dirty mire
Waye not his Crib, his wooden dishe
Nor beasts that by him feede
Way not his mothers poore attire
Nor Josephs simple weede]
This stable is a Princes Courte
The Cribb his chaire of state
The beastes are parcell of his pompe
The wooden dishe his plate.
The persons in that poore attire
His royall livories weare
The prince himselfe is come from heaven
This pompe is prized there.
With joy approach O Christian wighte
Do homage to thy Kinge
And highly prise this humble pompe
Which he from heaven doth bringe.