A web-based edition of early seventeenth-century political poetry from manuscript sources. It brings into the public domain over 350 poems, many of which have never before been published.
Piii20 When in the brazen leaves of fame
Notes. This is one of two elegies on Buckingham written by Thomas Carew, who was to become one of the preeminent court poets of the 1630s. (See also “Reader when these dumbe stones have told”.) Both poems were published in Carew’s 1640 Poems and both are analyzed perceptively by G. Hammond (51-53). Carew depicts Felton as a “Cloudy sullen soul” animated by “blinded zeale”, a phrase that links the assassin to a pejoratively imagined Puritanism. The concluding lines may refer to the magnificent monument erected to Buckingham in Westminster Abbey by his widow, Katherine Villiers, Duchess of Buckingham. If this is so, the poem may not have been finished until the time of the tomb’s completion in the early 1630s.
“On the Duke of Buckingham”
When in the brazen1 leaves of fame
the life, the death of Buckingham
Shallbe recorded, if Truths hand
Incize the story of our land,
Posterity shall see a faire
5structure, by the studious care
of two Kings2 raised, that did no lesse
their wisedome then their power expresse;
By blinded zeale, whose doubtfull light
made murders scarlett roabe seeme white,
10Whose vaine deluding phantomes charmed
A Cloudy sullen soule, and armed
a desperate hand thirsty of blood,
Torne from the faire Earth where it stood;
So the Majestick fabrick fell
15his actions let our Annalls tell,
wee write no Chronicle; this pyle
weares only sorrowes face and style,
which even the envy which did wayte
upon his flourishing estate
20turned to soft pittie of his death,
now payes his Hearse; but that cheape breath
shall not blow heere, nor th’unpure brine
Puddle those streames that bathe this shrine.
These are the pious obsequies3
25dropt from his Chaste wives pregnant eyes
In frequent shewers, and were alone
by her congealing sighes made stone;
on which the Carver did bestow
these formes, and characters of woe,
30So hee the fashion only lent
whilst she wept all the Monument.
Source. BL MS Harley 6917, fols. 20v-21r
Other known sources. Carew, Poems 96; Carew, Poems of Thomas Carew 57; Bodleian MS Don. b.9, fol. 33r; Rosenbach MS 1083/17, fol. 65r
Piii20
1 brazen: brass, brass-like. <back>
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