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.
I23 Once he was Grace it selfe
Notes. This poem survives in the news diary of William Whiteway of Dorchester. He ascribes it to a local man, the “Poet Laureate of Dorchester”, R[ichard] Beech.
Once he was Grace it selfe
And could make others gratious.
Envie that crooked Elfe1
Thought that life was to spatious.
And therefore did confine him
5Into a narrower place2
Where she meant to assigne him
The dregs of all disgrace.
But vertue then provided
Sorting his Fortunes so
10That they should be divided,
Some good with bad to goe.
And in despight of Envies face,
To live and dy, grac’t in disgrace.
Source. BL MS Egerton 784, fol. 5v
Other known sources. Whiteway 23
I23
1 crooked Elfe: possibly an allusion to the crook-backed Robert Cecil, blamed here for engineering Ralegh’s fall in 1603. <back>
2 confine...narrower place: reference to Ralegh’s imprisonment in the Tower in 1603. <back>
Web Marketing & Design
by FourSquare Innovations 
