Sir Walter Ralegh, The Poems, with other Verse from the Court of Elizabeth I, Ed. Martin Dodsworth, Everyman, J. M. Dent, London, 1999.


Most welcome Love, thou mortal foe to lies
Thou root of life and ruiner of debate,

(‘Most welcome Love, thou mortal foe to lies’, 5)


To ranging thoughts a gentle reining hand;

(‘Most welcome Love, thou mortal foe to lies’, 5)


Fortune hath taken all away from me,
Fortune hath taken all by taking thee;
(‘Fortune hath taken thee away, my love, 8)


With Wisdom’s eyes had but blind Fortune seen,
Then had my love my love for ever been;
But Love, farewell; though Fortune conquer thee,
No fortune base shall ever alter me.

(‘Fortune hath taken thee away, my love, 8)

Like truthless dreams, so are my joys expir’d,
And past return are all my dandled days,
My love misled, and fancy quite retir’d;
Of all which past, the sorrow only stays.
/
My lost delights, now clean form sight of land,
Have left me all alone in unknown ways,
My mind to woe, my life in fortune’s hand;
Of all which past, the sorrow only stays.
/
As in a country strange without companion,
I only wail the wrong of death’s delays,
Whose sweet spring spent, whose summer well nigh done;
Of all which past, the sorrow only stays;
Whom care forewarns, ere age and winter cold,
To haste me hence to find my fortune’s fold.

(Farewell to the Court, Complete, 14)


Lost in the mud of those high-flowing streams,
Which through more fairere fields their courses bend,
Slain with self-thoughts, amaz’d in fearful dreams,
Woes without date, discomforts without end:
(The One-and-twentieth and Last Book of the Ocean to Cynthia, 18)

One gladsome day a thousand cares redress’d;
(The One-and-twentieth and Last Book of the Ocean to Cynthia, 19)

Sometime the trumpet of her thought’s retreat.

(The One-and-twentieth and Last Book of the Ocean to Cynthia, 19)


So my forsaken heart, my wither’d mind,
Widow of all the joy it once possess’d,
My hopes clean out of sight with forced wind,
To kingdoms strange, to lands far-off address’d,

(The One-and-twentieth and Last Book of the Ocean to Cynthia, 20)


Twelve years entire I wasted in this war,
Twelve years of my most happy younger days;

(The One-and-twentieth and Last Book of the Ocean to Cynthia, 21)


And drown’d my mind in depths of misery.
Sometime I died; sometime I was distract,

(The One-and-twentieth and Last Book of the Ocean to Cynthia, 22)


Kindled afresh within my memory
The many dear achievements that befell
/
In those prime years and infancy of love,
Which to describe were but to die in writing;
Ah, those I sought, but vainly, to remove,
And vainly shall, by which I perish living.
(The One-and-twentieth and Last Book of the Ocean to Cynthia, 22)

She cares not for thy praise, who knows not theirs;
It’s now an idle labour, and a tale
Told out of time, …
(The One-and-twentieth and Last Book of the Ocean to Cynthia, 28)


So her hart heart, so her estranged mind,
…
So to thy error have her ears inclin’d,

(The One-and-twentieth and Last Book of the Ocean to Cynthia, 28)


What I possess is but the same I sought:
My love was false, my labours were deceit.

(The One-and-twentieth and Last Book of the Ocean to Cynthia, 31)

Words cannot knit, or wailings make anew.

(The One-and-twentieth and Last Book of the Ocean to Cynthia, 31)


She sleeps thy death, that erst thy danger sighed.

(The One-and-twentieth and Last Book of the Ocean to Cynthia, 31)


Thus home I draw, as death’s long night draws on;
Yet ev’ry foot, old thoughts turn back mine eyes:
Constraint me guides, as old age draws a stone
Against the hill, which over-weighty lies
/
For feeble arms or wasted strength to move.
My steps are backward, gazing on my loss,
My mind’s affection and my soul’s sole love,
Not mix’d with fancy’s chaff or fortune’s dross.
/
To God I leave it, who first gave it me,
And I her gave, and she return’d again,
As it was hers. So let His mercies be
Of my last comforts the essential mean.
But be it so or not, th’effects are past.
Her love hath end; my woe must ever last.

(The One-and-twentieth and Last Book of the Ocean to Cynthia, ending, 32)


Do in the evening and winter sad
Present my mind, which takes my time’s account,
The grief remaining of the joy it had.


(The End of the Books of the Ocean’s Love to Cynthia, and the Beginning of the Two-and-twentieth Book, entreating Sorrow, 33)


So could she not if she were not the sun,
Which sees the birth, and burial, of all else,
And holds that power with which she first begun,

(The End of the Books of the Ocean’s Love to Cynthia, and the Beginning of the Two-and-twentieth Book, entreating Sorrow, 33)


…The lie’s descent is over-base to tell;
To us it came from Italy, to them it came from Hell.
(‘Go, echo of the mind, a careless truth protest’, 37)


To seek some corner in the dark and hide yourself from shame.

(‘Go, echo of the mind, a careless truth protest’, 37)


What is our life? It is a play of passion.
What is our mirth? The music of division.
Our mothers, they the tiring-houses be,
Where we are dress’d for time’s short tragedy.
Earth is the stage, heavn the spectator is
Who doth behold whoe’er doth act amiss.
The graves that hide us form the parching sun
Are but drawn curtains till the play is done.

(‘What is our life? It is a play of passion’, complete, 39)


One fire that burns more forcibly,
One wolf that other wolves does bite more sore,
One hawk more swift than other hawks does fly.
So one most mischievous of men before,
Callicrates, false knave as knave might be,
Met with Menalcidas, more false than he.

(verse translation from The History of the Wortld, x., Pausanias vii.xii.1, page 48)


Attributed to Sir Walter Ralegh:

Three things there be that prosper all apace
And flourish which they are asunder fare,
But on a day, they meet all in a place,
And when they meet, they one another mar.
/
And they be these: the Wood, the Weed, the Wag:
The Wood is that that makes the gallows tresss;
The Weed is that that strings the hangman’s bag;
The Wag, my pretty knave, betokens thee.
/
Now mark, dear boy, while these aseemble not,
Green springs the tree, hemp grows, the wag is wild;
But when they meet, it makes the timbers rot,
It frets the halter, and it chokes the child.

(Sir Walter Ralegh to his Son, complete, 57)


What winter else but pleasant spring’s decay?

(‘What else is hell but loss of blissful heaven?, 72)


Cowards fear to die, but courage stout,
Rather than live in snuff, will be put out.
(Sir W. Ralegh on the Snuff of a Candle the Night before he Died, complete, 74)