[print edition page number: 85]

Lady Anne Southwell

All Married Men Desire to Have Good Wives (1626)

All married men desire to have good wives,
But few give good example by their lives.
They are our head;^[1] they would have us their heels.^[2]
This makes the good wife kick; the good man reels.
When God brought Eve to Adam for a bride,                     5
The text^[3] says she was ta’en from out man’s side,
A symbol of that side whose sacred blood
Flowed for his spouse, the Church’s saving good.^[4]
This is a mystery, perhaps too deep
For blockish Adam that was fallen asleep. [86]                     10

An Elegy Written by the Lady A.S. to the Countess of Londonderry (1626)^[5]

Since thou, fair soul, art warbling to a sphere^[6]
From whose resultances^[7] these quickened were;
Since thou hast laid that downy couch^[8] aside
Of lilies, violets, and roseal^[9] pride
And locked in marble chests that tapestry                              5
That did adorn the world’s epitome^[10]
So safe that doubt itself can never think
Fortune or fate hath power to make a chink;
Since thou for state hath raised thy state so far,
To a large heaven from a vault circular;^[11]                           10
Because the thronging^[12] virtues in thy breast
Could not have room enough in such a chest;
What need hast thou these blotted lines should tell
Souls must again take rise from whence they fell,
From Paradise, and that this earth’s dark womb                 15
Is but a wardrobe till the day of doom
To keep those worms that on her bosom bred,
Till time and death be both extermined?^[13]
Yet in thy passage, fair soul, let me know
What things thou saw’st in rising from below.  [87]              20
Whether that Cynthia,^[14] regent of the flood,
Within her orb admit of mortal brood?
Whether the twelve signs serve the sun for state,^[15]
Or else confine him to the zodiac?
And force him retrograde to be the nurse                             25
(Who circularly glides his oblique course)
Of Alma Mater,^[16] or unfreeze the womb
Of Madam Tellus,^[17] which else proves a tomb?
Whether the stars be knobs upon the spheres,
Or shreds compos’d of Phoebus’ golden hairs?                   30
Or whether th’air be as a cloudy sieve,
The stars be holes through which the good souls drive? ^[18]
Whether that Saturn that the six out tops^[19]
Sit ever eating of the brats of Ops,
Whose jealousy is like a sea of gall                                          35
Unto his own proves periodical?^[20]
But as a gliding star who falls to earth
Or lovers’ thoughts, so souls ascend their birth,
Which makes me think that thine had no one notion
Of those true elements, by whose true motion                    40
All things have life and death. But if thine eyne^[21]
Should fix a while upon the crystalline,^[22]
Thy hungry eye, that never could before [88]
See but by faith and faithfully adore,
Should stay to mark the threefold hierarchy,^[23]                 45
Differing in state, not in felicity,
How they in order ’bout^[24] Jehovah move,
In several offices, but with one love,
And from his hand do hand in hand come down,
Till the last hand do heads of mortals crown.                      50
Fain would I know from some that have been there
What state or shape celestial bodies bear!
For man to heaven hath thrown a waxen ball,
In which he thinks h’hath^[25] got true forms^[26] of all,
And, from the forge house of his fantasy,                             55
He creates new and spins out destiny.
And thus these proud worms, wrapped in loathsome rags,
Shut heaven’s Idea^[27] up in leathern bags.^[28]
Now since in heaven are many ladies more
That blind devotion^[29] busily implore,                                  60
Good Lady, friend, or rather lovely Dame,
If you be gone from out this clayey frame,
Tell what you know, whether th’saints^[30] adoration
Will stoop to think on dusty procreation,
And, if they will not, they are fools (pardie)^[31]                  65
That pray to them and rob the trinity.
The angels joy in our good conversation,
Yet see us not, but by reverberation.^[32]
And if they could, you saints as clear eyes have,
If down you look to earth, then to the grave, [89]                  70
’Tis but a landskip^[33] more to look to hell.
In viewing it, what strange things may you tell!
From out that sulphurous and bitumnous^[34] lake,
Where Pluto^[35] doth his tilt and tourney^[36] make,
Where the Elysium and their purgatory                                75
Stand like two suburbs by a promontory.^[37]
Poets and popelings^[38] are equipollent,^[39]
Both makers are of gods of like descent:
Poets make blind gods who with willows beats them;
Popelings make hosts of gods, and ever eats them.^[40]      80
But let them both, poets and popelings, pass.
Who deals too much with either is an ass.
Charon^[41] conduct them as they have devised.
The fall of angels must not be disguised.
As ’tis not tyranny, but loving pity                                          85
That kings build prisons in a populous city,
So the next way to fright us back to good
Is to discuss the pains of Stygian flood.^[42]
In Eve’s disdainéd nature we are base,
And whips persuade us more than love or grace,                90
So that if heaven should take away this rod,
God would hate us, and we should not love God.
For as affliction in a full-fed state,
Like vinegar in sauces, do awake
Dull appetites and makes men feed the better,                   95
So when a lethargy our brains doth fetter,
The only way to rouse again our wits [90]
Is when the surgeon’s chiefest tool is whips.
Brass hath a cozening^[43] face and looks like gold,
But where the touchstone comes it cannot hold.^[44]        100
That son of ours doth best deserve our rent
That doth with patience bear our chastisement.
Each titmouse^[45] can salute the lusty spring
And wear it out with jolly reveling,
But your pure white and vestal^[46] clothed swan               105
Sings at her death and never sings but then.^[47]
O noble minded bird, I envy thee,
For thou hast stolen this high born note from me.
But as the prophet at his master’s feet
When he ascended up the welkin^[48] fleet                          110
Watched for his cloak,^[49] so every bird and beast
When princely Adam tumbled from the nest
Catched from his knowing soul some quality
And humbly kept it to re-edify^[50]
Their quondam^[51] king. And now, man goes to school,      115
To every pismire^[52] that proclaims him fool.
But stay my wandering thoughts! Alas, where made I
In speaking to a dead, a senseless Lady?
You ink and paper be her passing bell;
The sexton^[53] to her knell be Anne Southwell.                 120