Marian Poetry in England in the Transition Period During and After the Reformation [Part 3] Robert Southwell

The oft-repeated Eva/Ave theme is employed in The Virgins Salutation, whose first stanza reads as follows:

    Spell Eva backe and Ave shall you finde
    the first began, the last reverst our harms
    an Angels witching worded did Eva blinde
    an Angels Ave disinchants the charmes,
    Death first by womans weakenes entred in,
    In womans vertue life doth now begin.
                                                         (1-6)

Southwell juxtaposes two angels, one of darkness whose witching words (3) blind Eve with its charmes (4), and one of light who disinchants (4) these. The alliteration womans weakenes (5) ties up with that of witching words (3) by gathering all that is negative in woman in this stanza under the first letter of her name. By picturing the angel of light as one who disinchants the charmes (4), the poet by implication contrasts these with the enchantment and charms of Mary whose vertue (6) has revitalised womankind.

In The Visitation the poet describes the Blessed Virgin as to be proclaimed Queene and mother of a God (1), who in her humility scorns pomp and ceremony and who, although a prince she is, and mightier prince doth beare (7) has remained humble enough to hasten to the bedside of an ageing cousin. In substituting prince for a more feminine appelation, the poet manages to strengthen the connotation, as the princes of his period would have led armies to military victory, whereas the princess of the same era would have performed a more passive role. Once again, Southwell's genius for juxtaposing the divinity and humanity of Christ comes to the fore in an arresting concluding couplet:

    With secret signes the children greet each other,
    But open praise each leaveth to his mother.
                                                     (17-18)


In The Nativitie of Christ, Southwell provides an exquisitely conceived metaphor to ilustrate the father/daughter/spouse theme:

    Behold the father is his daughters sonne
    the bird that built the nest, is hatched therein.
                                                 (1-2)

Rather than intrude on the deity by a more straightforward approach, the poet borrows from creation the image of the self-sufficient bird family, one of nature's species on which a caring father as well as a mother has been lavished, presenting the perfectly balanced imagery of the tightly-knit, mutually dependent and supportive bird family of father, mother and newly-hatched young, to represent the mystery of Christ's dependence upon the Blessed Virgin.

In The death of our Ladie, the poet describes the hollow emptiness left in Christian hearts when Mary renders mankind an orphan (4), though it was no death to her but to her woe (7). The end of Mary's life on earth terminates only her spiritual anguish, in terms of Catholic teaching that Mary was assumed body and soul into Heaven on the grounds that, being without sin, she, unlike the rest of humanity, is not subject to death. Like its fellows, this lyric is as much a doctrine lesson as a poetic exercise.

Dr Luky Whittle

Edited by Catherine Nicolette