Poets From England

"Rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field. I know already, for your forwardness you have deserved rewards and crowns."

"For even our enemies hold our nation resolute and valiant, which though they will not outwardly show, they invariably know. And whensoever the malice of our enemies should cause them to make any attempt against us, I doubt not but we shall have the greatest glory, God fighting for those that truly serve Him with the justness of their quarrel."

"I am Richard II know ye not that? ... He that will forget God, will also forget his benefactors; this tragedy was played 40 times in open streets and houses."

"If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all."

"I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm."

"Official papal policy was to excommunicate Christians trading with Muslims, but Elizabeth was now beyond such edicts. By the 1580s Elizabeth had a resident ambassador in Istanbul (then Constantinople) and consuls throughout North Africa and the Middle East, including in places like Aleppo and Raqqa. As reformed Protestants, many of them would have felt safer traveling in Muslim lands under Ottoman protection than in Catholic Europe, where arrest and the Inquisition invariably awaited them."

"My care is like my shadow in the sun, Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it, Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done. His too familiar care doth make me rue it. No means I find to rid him from my breast, Till by the end of things it be supprest. Some gentler passion slide into my mind, For I am soft and made of melting snow; Or be more cruel, love, and so be kind. Let me or float or sink, be high or low. Or let me live with some more sweet content, Or die and so forget what love ere meant."

"[Y]ou suffer many ministers to preach what they list, and to minister the sacraments according to their own fancies—some one way, some another—to the breach of unity; yea, and some of them so curious in searching matters above their capacity as they preach they wot not what: that there is no hell, but a torment of conscience; nay, I have heard of there be six preachers in one diocese the which do preach six sundry ways. I wish such men to be brought to conformity and unity, that they minister the sacraments according to the order of this realm and preach all one truth; and that such as be found not worthy to preach, to be compelled to read homilies such as were set forth in our brother King Edward his time and since. For there is more of learning in one of those than in twenty of some of their sermons."

"I grieve and dare not show my discontent, I love and yet am forced to seem to hate, I do, yet dare not say I ever meant, I seem stark mute but inwardly do prate."

"Amyas, my most careful and faithful servant, God reward thee treblefold in the double for thy most troublesome charge so well discharged."

"The use of the sea and air is common to all; neither can a title to the ocean belong to any people or private persons, forasmuch as neither nature nor public use and custom permit any possession thereof."

"For rather will I never meddle with marriage than have such a bad covenant added to my part. Shall it be ever found true that Queen Elizabeth hath solemnized the perpetual harm of England under the glorious title of marriage with Francis, heir of France? No, no, it shall never be."

"I...do render you many loving thanks for the joy you took of my narrow escape from the chaws [jaws] of death, to which I might easily have fallen but that the hand of the Highest saved me from that snare. And for that the curse of that design rose up from the wicked suggestion of the Jesuits, which make it an acceptable sacrifice to God and meritorious to themself that a king not of their profession should be murdered, therefore I could keep my pen no longer from discharging my care of your person, that you suffer not such vipers to inhabit your land."

"Brass shines as fair to the ignorant as gold to the goldsmiths."

"Was I not born in the realm? Were my parents born in any foreign country? Is there any cause I should alienate myself from being careful over this country? Is not my kingdom here? Whom have I oppressed? Whom have I enriched to others' harm? What turmoil have I made in this commonwealth, that I should be suspected to have no regard to the same? How have I governed since my reign? I will be tried by envy itself. I need not to use many words, for my deeds do try me."

"The doubt of future foes exiles my present joy, And wit me warns to shun such snares as threaten mine annoy; For falsehood now doth flow, and subjects’ faith doth ebb, Which should not be if reason ruled or wisdom weaved the web. But clouds of joys untried do cloak aspiring minds, Which turn to rain of late repent by changed course of winds. The top of hope supposed the root upreared shall be, And fruitless all their grafted guile, as shortly ye shall see. The dazzled eyes with pride, which great ambition blinds, Shall be unsealed by worthy wights whose foresight falsehood finds. The daughter of debate that discord aye doth sow Shall reap no gain where former rule still peace hath taught to know. No foreign banished wight shall anchor in this port; Our realm brooks not seditious sects, let them elsewhere resort. My rusty sword through rest shall first his edge employ To poll their tops that seek such change or gape for future joy."

"I will make you shorter by the head."

"The queen's majesty being right sorry to understand that the order of common prayer, set forth by the common consent of the realm and by authority of parliament in the first year of her reign, wherein is nothing contained but the scripture of God, and that which is consonant unto it, is now of late of some men despised, and spoken against, both by open preachings, and writings, and of some bold and vain curious men, new and other rites found out and frequented; whereupon contentions, sects, and disquietness doth arise among her people, and for one godly and uniform order, diversity of rites and ceremonies, disputations and contentions, schisms and divisions already risen, and more like to ensue: the cause of which disorders, her majesty doth plainly understand to be the negligence of the bishops and other magistrates, who should cause the good laws and acts of parliament made in this behalf to be better executed, and not so dissembled and winked at, as hitherto (it may appear) that they have been."

"Kings were wont to honour philosophers, but if I had such I would honour them as angels that should have such piety in them that they would not seek where they are the second to be the first, and where the third to be the second and so forth."

"[O]f late years there hath been used in divers dioceses of this realm a certain public exercise, or, as they call it, prophesying, by certain persons pretending a more purity, by the manner of the doing thereof evil effect hath ensued in some places, to our grief, among the unlearned sort, easy to be carried with novelties. Therefore, for certain good causes moving us, we do will and command you, forthwith upon the receipt hereof, to make express order throughout all your diocese, that all such prophecies be forborne; and none other exercise be suffered to be publicly used than preaching by persons learned, discreet, conformable and sound in religion, heard and allowed by you without partiality, and reading homilies in such sort as is set forth by public authority, by the injunction and order of the Book of Common Prayer."

"I thank God that you beware so soon of Jesuits that have been the source of all these treacheries in this realm and will spread like an evil weed if at the first they be not weeded out... What religion is this that they pay—the way to salvation is to kill the prince for a merit meritorious?"

"Though I be a woman yet I have as good a courage answerable to my place as ever my father had. I am your anointed Queen. I will never be by violence constrained to do anything. I thank God I am endued with such qualities that if I were turned out of the Realm in my petticoat I were able to live in any place in Christendom."

"But to grant them churches, wherein they might celebrate mass, and have congregations and public assemblies, she could not with the safety of her realm, and without wrong to her own honour and conscience: neither did she see cause, why she should grant it, seeing England embraced not new or strange doctrine, but the same which Christ commanded, and what the primitive and catholic church had received, and was approved by the ancient fathers, as might be testified by their writings. Therefore for her to allow churches which contradicted the truth and the gospel, were not only to repeal the laws established by act of parliament, but to sow religion out of religion, to distract good people's minds, to cherish factions, to disturb religion and the commonwealth, and to mingle divine and human things."

"[I] would rather be a beggar and single than a queen and married."

"And whereas you would frighten us, by telling how emperors, kings, and princes have owned the bishop of Rome's authority; it was contrary in the beginning. For our Saviour Christ paid his tribute unto Caesar, as the chief superior; which shews your Romish supremacy is usurped."

"Like as no one thing, in the government and charge committed unto us by the favourable goodness of Almighty God, doth more profit and beautify the same to his pleasure and acceptation, to our comfort and ease of our government, and, finally, to the universal weal and repose of our people and countries, than unity, quietness, and concord, as well amongst the public ministers having charge under us, as in the multitude of the people by us and them ruled; so, contrariwise, diversity, variety, contention, and vain love of singularity, either in our ministers or in the people, must needs provoke the displeasure of Almighty God."

"This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes."

"I am already bound unto an husband, which is the kingdom of England... for every one of you, and as many as are English, are my children and kinsfolks."

"Wherefore, although our earnest care and inward desire hath always been, from the beginning of our reign, to provide that by laws and ordinances agreeable to truth and justice, and consonant to good order, this our realm should be directed and governed, both in the ecclesiastical and civil policy, by public officers and ministers following, as near as possibly might be, one rule, form, and manner of order in all their actions, and directing our people to obey humbly and live godly, according to their several callings, in unity and concord, without diversities of opinions or novelties of rites and manners, or without maintenance or breeding of any contentions about the same."

"Our realm and subjects have been long wanderers, walking astray, whilst they were under the tuition of Romish pastors, who advised them to own a wolf for their head, (in lieu of a careful shepherd,) whose inventions, heresies, and schisms be so numerous, that the flock of Christ have fed on poisonous shrubs for want of wholesome pastures... and your own Romish idolatry maketh you liars."

"Master Tyrwhit and others have told me that there goeth rumors abroad which be greatly both against mine honor and honesty, which above all other things I esteem, which be these: that I am in the Tower and with child by my lord admiral. My lord, these are shameful slanders, for the which, besides the great desire I have to see the king’s majesty, I shall most heartily desire your lordship that I may come to the court after your first determination, that I may show myself there as I am. Written in haste from Hatfield this 28 of January. Your assured friend to my little power, Elizabeth."

"'Twas God the Word that spake it, He took the Bread and brake it: And what that Word did make it, That I believe and take it."

"The Queen sitting all alone in her splendid coach appeared like a goddess such as painters are wont to depict."

"With characteristic pragmatism as well as a keen eye for symbolic revenge, Elizabeth stripped lead and tin from deconsecrated Catholic churches to export to the Ottomans as munitions in their wars with the Shia Persian empire—“which the Turk buys of them,” wrote an outraged Spanish ambassador to England, “almost for its weight in gold, the tin being vitally necessary for the casting of guns and the lead for purposes of war.” The trade was so successful that it was replicated in the Barbary states of North Africa, where again English armaments were traded for gold and sugar (hence Elizabeth’s infamously bad teeth). English merchants also traveled as far as Persia, playing the Shah off against his Ottoman adversaries in a dangerous geopolitical game, aimed at neutralizing the Catholic threat of imminent Spanish invasion and keeping the ailing English economy afloat."

"Much suspected by me, Nothing proved can be, Quoth Elizabeth prisoner."

"[I]n sundry places of our realm of late...there is crept and brought into the church by some few persons, abounding more in their own senses than wisdom would, and delighting with singularities and changes, an open and manifest disorder and offence to the godly wise and obedient persons, by diversity of opinions and specially in the external, decent, and lawful rites and ceremonies to be used in the churches...the inconvenience thereof were like to grow from place to place, as it were by an infection, to a great annoyance, trouble, and deformity to the rest of the whole body of the realm, and thereby impair, deface, and disturb Christian charity, unity, and concord, being the very bands of our religion."

"Let tyrants fear, I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects."

"[T]he most glorious Sun that ever shined in our Firmament of England (the never to be forgotten Queen Elizabeth, of happy memory)."

"Dowson seemed gentle, affectionate, drifting. His poetry shows how sincerely he felt the fascination of religion, but his religion had certainly no dogmatic outline, being but a desire for a condition of virginal ecstasy. If it is true, as Arthur Symons, his very close friend, has written, that he loved the restaurant-keeper's daughter for her youth, one may be almost certain that he sought from religion some similar quality, something of that which the angels find who move perpetually, as Swedenborg has said, towards "the dayspring of their youth.""

"I cried for madder music and for stronger wine, But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire, Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine."

"I was not sorrowful, but only tired Of everything that ever I desired."

"I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind, Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng."

"When this, our rose, is faded, And these, our days, are done, In lands profoundly shaded From tempest and from sun: Ah, once more come together, Shall we forgive the past, And safe from worldly weather Possess our souls at last?"

"Ah, Lalage! while life is ours, Hoard not thy beauty rose and white, But pluck the pretty, fleeting flowers That deck our little path of light: For all too soon we twain shall tread The bitter pastures of the dead: Estranged, sad spectres of the night."

"Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine; And I was desolate and sick of an old passion."

"You ask my love completest, As strong next year as now, The devil take you, sweetest, Ere I make aught such vow. Life is a masque that changes, A fig for constancy! No love at all were better, Than love which is not free."

"I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion."

"They are not long, the weeping and the laughter, Love and desire and hate: I think they have no portion in us after We pass the gate.They are not long, the days of wine and roses; Out of a misty dream Our path emerges for a while, then closes Within a dream."

"Yea! for our roses fade, the world is wild, But there, beside the altar, there, is rest."

"I understand that absinthe makes the tart grow fonder."