ENG LYRIC POETRY.pdf - STIBA Malang

FROM WROTH TO PHILIPS
Nonetheless, she does set down for the record the major events of her life to
date—perhaps as a birthday present to herself. (At the outset, she tells us that
she has begun her poem on her 55th birthday.) Names, dates, personal musings,
marginal comments, Biblical allusions, proverbial sayings: all these notations
help to make “Martha Moulsworth, Widow” into one of the most graphically
present women of the period, a kind of Bess of Hardwick in verse.
Thrice this Right hand did holly wedlocke plight
And thrice this Left with pledged ringe was dight
three husbands me, & I have them enjoyde
Nor I by them, nor they by me annoyde
all lovely, lovinge all, some more, some lesse
though gonn their love, & memorie I blesse.
230
(ll. 43–8)
This is equanimity that comes with age: generous, accepting, socially aware, tonally
nuanced. She is definitely a Martha, not a Mary, hospitable, almost to a fault:
our Saviour christ her guesse [sic] to entertayne
God gyve me grace my Inward house to dight
that he wth me may supp, & stay all night.
(ll. 18–20)
A few lines later, after lamenting the exclusion of women from the universities—
“Two Universities we have of men/o thatt we had but one of women then” (ll.
33–4)—and then speaking further of her related decline as a Latinist, she writes
in the margin: “Lattin is not the most marketable mariadge mettall,” and then
goes on to add in verse:
Had I no other portion to my dowre
I might have stood a virgin to this houre
Butt though the virgin Muses I love well
I have longe since Bid virgin life ffarewell.
(ll. 39–42)
Moulsworth would surely know her way around an Austen novel—perhaps even
around a Congreve comedy. Wry, pious, and witty, she enjoys wordplay, and with
her third husband, her favorite, she enjoys the ways of the world:
Was never man so Buxome to his wife
Wth him I led an easie darlings life.
I had my will in house, in purse in Store
What would a women old or yong have more?
(ll. 65–8)