[print edition page number: 113]
Katherine Philips
To Antenor,[1] on a Paper of Mine Which J. Jones Threatens to Publish to His Prejudice[2]
From Poems (1667)
Must then my crimes become thy scandal too?
Why sure the devil hath not much to do.
The weakness of the other charge is clear,
When such a trifle must bring up the rear.
But this is mad design; for who before 5
Lost his repute upon another’s score?
My love and life, I must confess, are thine,
But not my errors; they are only mine.
And if my faults should be for thine allowed,
It will be hard to dissipate the cloud. 10
But Eve’s rebellion did not Adam blast,
Until himself forbidden fruit did taste.[3]
’Tis possible this magazine of hell[4]
(Whose name would turn a verse into a spell,
Whose mischief is congenial to his life) 15
May yet enjoy an honorable wife.
Nor let his ill be reckoned as her blame, [114]
Nor let my follies blast Antenor’s name.
But if those lines a punishment could call
Lasting and great as this dark lantern’s gall, 20
Alone I’d court the torments with content,
To testify that thou art innocent.
So if my ink, through malice, proved a stain,
My blood should justly wash it off again.
But since that mint of slander[5] could invent 25
To make so dull a rime his instrument,
Let verse revenge the quarrel. But he’s worse
Than wishes, and below a poet’s curse;
And more than this wit knows not how to give,
Let him be still himself, and let him live. 30
- Antenor: the Greek name Philips used for her husband, James Philips, a prominent Welsh Parliamentarian. In classical mythology, Antenor was a wise Trojan elder who advised Priam (see the Iliad, book 3). ↵
- which J. Jones . . . prejudice: Philips wrote a poem with explicit royalist sympathies titled “On the Double Murder of King Charles” which Jones (who has not been definitively identified, but was clearly a Parliamentary sympathizer), discovered and threatened to publish to the detriment of her husband’s reputation, since he was a Parliamentarian and strong supporter of Cromwell. ↵
- But Eve’s . . . taste: See Genesis 3:6 and 3:17 (KJV), where God tells Adam: “Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.” ↵
- magazine of hell: storehouse or repository of evildoing ↵
- mint of slander: origin or fount of slander ↵
