ENG LYRIC POETRY.pdf - STIBA Malang

BEN JONSON AND THE ART OF INCLUSION
Of destiny, and spin her own free hours.
Such when I meant to feign and wished to see,
My muse bade, Bedford write, and that was she.
As the poem makes luminously clear, “Bedford” ensures that Lucy is perceived
as no ordinary “spinster.” Nor is the poet. In this rich revision of the Petrarchan
tradition (one hears the opening sonnet of Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella in the
background), he partakes in a similar act of prestidigitation with the abrupt, final
spinning: “and that was she.” And perhaps no poem in English makes a more
exquisite adjustment to the signifying registers of a Christian name than “On
My First Daughter,” short enough to quote in full:
Here lies, to each her parents’ ruth,
Mary, the daughter of their youth;
Yet, all heaven’s gifts being heaven’s due,
It makes the father less to rue.
At six months’ end she parted hence
With safety of her innocence;
Whose soul heaven’s Queen (whose name she bears),
In comfort of her mother’s tears,
Hath placed amongst her virgin train;
Where, while that severed doth remain,
This grave partakes the fleshly birth;
Which cover lightly, gentle earth.
Although practically formulaic, the epitaph is anything but impersonal, and
along with his even better known eulogy to his first son, it reminds us that the
collection Jonson designated as his “ripest” comes bearing his autograph, as if
helping to authenticate the accounts of praise and blame meted out elsewhere
as well as to add a touch of value, or worth, to the book so as to make it into
something of a collector’s item. Not even Martial, whose epitaph on Erotion (V.
34) lies behind this poem, can be seen grieving for his own children.
Jonson’s most celebrated and comprehensive act of naming, however, does
not occur in The Epigrams, a volume that, with the notable exception of the
scatological “On the Famous Voyage”—that 196-line mock epic that ridicules
so many distinctly “Elizabethan” devices—generally restricts itself to poems of
not more than thirty lines. It happens in The Forest, and not to a person but to
a place. “To Penshurst” celebrates the ancestral home of the Sidneys in Kent,
the original construction of which dated as far back as the mid-fourteenth
century; but the building had been improved and extended at various times since
then, especially in the mid-sixteenth century when it came into the possession
of Sir William Sidney during the reign of Edward VI as a gift for service done to
the crown. When Jonson composed his poem, it was owned and occupied by
Robert Sidney, the younger brother of Sir Philip, and his wife, Barbara Gamage.
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