Sir Walter Raleigh: In Life & Legend (27 page)

Four of the most remarkable of Ralegh's poems exist in a single copy in his own hand at Hatfield House, where they were found by the archivist, C. J. Stewart, in the middle of the nineteenth century.
35
 They were published for the first time by John Hannah in 1870, nearly three centuries after they were written. Authorship is not in doubt, but there is some question about the date on which they were written. This is usually thought to be 1592, the year of Ralegh's disgrace and imprisonment following his marriage, but Katherine has made a claim for 1603, following his conviction for treason.
36
 External evidence provides no certainty and any conclusion must rest upon readings of the poems themselves. Both dates seem possible, although the sonnet 'My boddy in the walls captived' may fit better with the earlier date. It would be prudent not to tie any reading, at least of the longer poem, to any specific date.

The titles of the longer poem and its successor have led to some textual agonizing. Do the titles, 'The 21 th and last booke of the Ocean to Scinthia' and 'The end of the boockes, of the Oceans love to Scinthia, and the beginninge of the 22 boock, entreatinge of Sorrow', imply the existence of a giant work of twenty previous books, comparable in scale to the seven books of The Facric Queene? Spenser himself encouraged belief in a long poem by Ralegh. In his prefatory letter to The Faerie Queene, written to Ralegh, Spenser wrote that he meant both 'our soveraine the Queene' and 'a most virtuous and beautifull Lady...fashioning her name according to your owne excellent conceipt of Cynthia (Phoebe and Cynthia being both names of Diana)'; and in Colin Clout Comes Home Againe he talks of the shepherd of the ocean (Ralegh) singing 'a lamentable lay...of Cynthia, the Ladle of the sea'.
37
 However, it seems unlikely that Ralegh would have had the leisure to write another twenty books, each of five hundred lines or so, at any time, let alone before the end of 1591, and certainly Spenser's lines are no evidence for their existence. More interesting is the evidence that Ralegh was friendly with one of the pre-eminent poets of his day - perhaps the pre-eminent poet apart from Shakespeare - and that they exchanged verses together. Spenser's dedicatory sonnet to Ralegh spoke of him in high terms, as of course it would:

There is one other problem about the Cynthia poems. What were they doing at Hatfield, unknown and undiscovered? There are only two possible explanations: the first, suggested by Walter Oakeshott, is that when Ralegh was released from the Tower in 1592, in his haste to get down to the south-west he left the poems behind and Cecil gathered them up. The other, and much more likely, is that Ralegh gave them to Robert Cecil, either for passing to Elizabeth, or, if they were written after her death, as a memorial to her. If they were written around 1592, Cecil may understandably have thought that they were not the most appropriate form of petition to the Queen.
38

There are five poems in the 'Cynthia group' at Hatfield House: 'Now we have present made' (no. 23 in Rudick); 'If Synthia be a Queene' (no. 24); 'My boddy in the walls captived' (no. 25); 'The 21th and last booke of the Ocean to Scinthia' (no. 26), at 522 lines much the longest of all Ralegh's poems; and 'The end of the boockes, of the Oceans love to Scinthia, and the beginninge of the 22 boock, entreatinge of Sorrow' (no. 27). 'Now we have present made' appears to be a relatively simple poem of praise to Elizabeth, perhaps on the occasion of the giving of a present.
39
 No. 24 is a fragment of seven enigmatic lines.
40
 With 'My boddy in the walls captived' we are in clearer territory.
41

He claims not to be hurt by being physically in prison, and indeed the prison formed by his enthralment to the Queen was wholly delightful, with 'love's fire and beauty's light'. But now things have changed. Although he is still bound to the Queen, he is deprived of the spiritual nourishment, warmth and light of her love. The sonnet seems to echo the words of his letter to Cecil from house arrest in Durham House in July 1592:

My hart was never broken till this day that I here the Queen goes away so farr off whom I have followed so many yeares with so great love and desire, in so many jurneys, and am now left behinde her and in a darke prison [all alone interlined]...now my hart is cast into the deapth of all misery. I that was wount to behold her ridinge like Alexander, huntinge like Diana, walkinge like Venus.
43

However, the poem could be dated to 1603 or so, following his imprisonment in the Tower.'But time's effects and destinies despiteful/have changed both my keeper and my fare' could refer to the accession of James Ito the throne after the death of Elizabeth. Either date would be possible, and whenever the sonnet was written, the message is clear: prison walls do not cast him down, for his misery stems from the absence of his beloved. The text illustrates the ambiguities raised by attempting to fix too firm a chronology to Ralegh's poems.

'The Ocean to Scinthia' is much the longest and the most important of Ralegh's poems.
44
 It describes the prolonged and painful destruction of the relationship on which his success at Court, with all its opportunities for wealth and fame, depended. The poem is long, complex and often difficult to grasp. While a full analysis is impossible here, some guidance should be helpful, although no substitute for a full reading of the poem.
45
 Ralegh begins by addressing 'his joys' - his pleasures or his happy days:

He can only use simple words to describe how his joy died when his fancy erred, presumably in his affair and marriage with Bess Throckmorton, only mentioned this once, and that obliquely in the course of the poem. He goes on to describe the desolation that has struck him:

He continues for another seventeen lines in this melancholy strain, but moves suddenly into high praise for Cynthia:

Elizabeth had indeed called him back from one of his expeditions, particularly that to Panama in 1592.
47
 The mood of the poem suddenly switches from devotion to the gradual death of love. The poet explains by a succession of images and similes how this happens:

Whether he actually had in mind the writing of The History of the World we cannot know, but he is led now to reflect more directly upon his own experience of Cynthia: