from Lives of the Poets


Margart Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle

twisted each letter to make such toys as I invent myself
totter'd and torn as pencilled shadows that over-love instructed
my husband will so humour the sense and words of the work
The Poetresses World in an Ear-Ring I dresse in my best becoming

 


Isabella Whitney

benefits I have even from Childhood receaved of you dere frind
though I to writing fall and made these SLIPS
to refresh my gasing eye not havyng of mine owne to discharg
Good Brother Good Sister Good Cosin Your poore Kinsewoman
wyll show you more then I wryt because I love you well

 

 

John Davies of Hereford

the Wye neere which yet Vntill we meete in
Oxford where I spend some gaining daies
the Master could so easly disguize his Pen
John Davies of the parish of St. Dunstan in the West
haue no land but Wales Ile defend
this Scumme of an hotch-potch so hamerd my Braines
I give my pictur and The Picture of the Plague
in hate with Loue I feele ryot oreabounds all the recompence
An airy-word I Coniur'd as I could herehence
Alan Halsey's books include Five Years Out (1989), The Text of Shelley's Death (1995) & *Wittgenstein's Devil: Selected Writing 1978-98* (2000). Lives of the Poets has been a work in progress for several years -- a selection, Lives of the Poets: A Preliminary Count, was published by Ispress in 2002. He ran The Poetry Bookshop in Hay-on-Wye 1979-96 and now lives in Sheffield where he continues to work as a specialist bookseller & is the publisher of West House Books.

 

Copyright © 2004 by Alan Halsey, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of U.S. Copyright law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that the editors are notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.