{"id":189,"date":"2008-11-06T23:25:32","date_gmt":"2008-11-06T23:25:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meeseeks:5080\/blog\/?p=189"},"modified":"2008-11-06T23:25:32","modified_gmt":"2008-11-06T23:25:32","slug":"poem-times-go-by-turns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/poem-times-go-by-turns\/","title":{"rendered":"Poem: Times go by Turns"},"content":{"rendered":"

To acknowledge the great political change<\/a> of the past week and to commemorate Guy Fawkes, here is a poem by an English Catholic martyr about the seasons of fate. Robert Southwell (c. 1561 – 1595) was an English Jesuit from an aristocratic family, whose mother had been a friend of Queen Elizabeth I. He left England illegally to study for the priesthood and returned – again illegally – to live and minister in secret to England’s oppressed Catholic population.\u00a0 He was captured, tortured by Elizabeth’s sadistic religious police, subjected to a show trial, and publicly executed.
\nSouthwell was a poet of fine sensitivity, and drew on his Jesuit spiritual training<\/a> to become the first English poet to develop personation<\/em> (or subjectivity)<\/em>, a psychologically-real description of the interior self.\u00a0\u00a0 His distant cousin<\/a> William Shakespeare was to adopt this idea in his plays, so that (for example) we learn about Hamlet’s internal mental deliberations, not only about his public actions and conversations.
\nWhig literary historians, intent on asserting a Protestant identity for all of English life and culture, have mostly written Southwell out of the story of English literature, despite his key influence on the religious poets of the next century, such as John Donne. Living underground and on the run, Southwell wrote poetry for a community unable to obtain prayer books or to easily hear preachers: poetry was thus a substitute for sermons and for personal counselling, and a form of prayer and spiritual meditation. His poetry is also strongly visual.
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Times Go By Turns<\/em>
\nThe lopped tree in time may grow again
\nMost naked plants renew both fruit and flower
\nThe sorriest weight may find release of pain
\nThe driest soil suck in some moistening shower
\nTimes go by turns and chances change by course
\nFrom foul to fair from better happ to worse
\nThe sea of fortune does not ever flow
\nShe draws her favours to the lowest ebb
\nHer tide has equal times to come and go
\nHer loom does weave the fine and coarsest web
\nNo joy so great but runneth to an end
\nNo happ so hard but may in fine amend.
\nNot always fall of leaf nor ever spring
\nNo endless night yet not eternal day
\nThe saddest birds a season find to sing
\nThe roughest storm a calm may soon allay
\nThus with succeeding turns god tempers all
\nThat man may hope to rise yet fear to fall
\nA Chance may win that by mis-chance was lost
\nThe net that holds no great takes little fish
\nIn some things all, in all things none are crossed
\nFew all they need but none have all they wish
\nUnmeddled joys here to no man befall
\nWho least has some who most has never all.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

References:<\/em>
\nChristopher Devlin [1956]: The Life of Robert Southwell: Poet and Martyr<\/em>.\u00a0 New York, NY, USA:\u00a0 Farrar, Straus and Cudahy.
\nRobert Southwell [2007]:\u00a0 Collected Poems.<\/em> Edited by Peter Davidson and Anne Sweeney.\u00a0 Manchester, UK:\u00a0 Fyfield Books.
\nAnne R. Sweeney [2006]: Robert Southwell:\u00a0Snow in Arcadia:\u00a0 Redrawing the\u00a0English Lyric Landscape 1586-1595.<\/em> Manchester, UK:\u00a0 Manchester University Press.
\n(Note:\u00a0 I have modernised the spelling where sensible to do so.) <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To acknowledge the great political change of the past week and to commemorate Guy Fawkes, here is a poem by an English Catholic martyr about the seasons of fate. Robert Southwell (c. 1561 – 1595) was an English Jesuit from an aristocratic family, whose mother had been a friend of Queen Elizabeth I. He left […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,63,71],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-poetry","category-religion","p1","y2008","m11","d06","h23"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}