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.
Nvi2 Contemne not Gracious king our plaints and teares
Notes. This poem responds to James I’s “O stay your teares yow who complaine”, and is thus a rather neat example of how a royal performance designed to dampen the craze for “railing rymes” is subsumed into, and ends up stimulating, the manuscript culture of political versifying.
“An answere to the wiper away of the Peoples teares”
Contemne not Gracious King our plaints and teares
Wee are no babes the tymes us witnesse beares
Yet since our father yow doe represent1
To be as babes to yow wee are content
T’is true yow can deject the prowdest minde
5For pride is base and soone to fall inclinde
Yow can take downe the mightiest man alive
Who doth from man his mightines derive
Yes shides2 of state will chipps of chance excell
though theise in Courts and those in dungeons dwell
10When soe yow please to imbrue your Royall hand
In bloud of those that dare at bay to stande
But we must goe in saufetie to our grave
Our harts for raunsome of our heads yow have
O lett not then disdaine but grace and love
15Lengthen their dayes whose faith yow daily prove
Or might we dye then kill with your aspect
Which death & life in instant doth effecte.
Source. Bodleian MS Ashmole 36-37, fol. 59r
Other known sources. Bodleian MS Eng. Poet.c.50., fol. 25v; Bodleian MS Rawl. Poet.26, fol. 20r; Bodleian MS Rawl. Poet.152, fol. 4r
Nvi2
1 our father yow doe represent: alluding to James I’s self-presentation as the nation’s father in “O stay your teares” (an image ubiquitous in royal imagery from this period). <back>
2 Shides: planks. Shides of wood are thus greater in size than “chipps”. <back>
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