A Royal Poet - Prose Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABABCCD E F DG H I I J J KLKMNO I J I P A I I QRQRRSS HJHJJRR RTRTTU R V WHWH I JRRRRSS IXIX R W RJRJJII H I VJVJ R R I I I Y R V RZ| Though your body be confined | A |
| And soft love a prisoner bound | B |
| Yet the beauty of your mind | A |
| Neither check nor chain hath found | B |
| Look out nobly then and dare | C |
| Even the fetters that you wear | C |
| FLETCHER | D |
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| ON a soft sunny morning in the genial month of May I made an excursion to Windsor Castle It is a place full of storied and poetical associations The very external aspect of the proud old pile is enough to inspire high thought It rears its irregular walls and massive towers like a mural crown around the brow of a lofty ridge waves its royal banner in the clouds and looks down with a lordly air upon the surrounding world | E |
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| On this morning the weather was of that voluptuous vernal kind which calls forth all the latent romance of a man's temperament filling his mind with music and disposing him to quote poetry and dream of beauty In wandering through the magnificent saloons and long echoing galleries of the castle I passed with indifference by whole rows of portraits of warriors and statesmen but lingered in the chamber where hang the likenesses of the beauties which graced the gay court of Charles the Second and as I gazed upon them depicted with amorous half dishevelled tresses and the sleepy eye of love I blessed the pencil of Sir Peter Lely which had thus enabled me to bask in the reflected rays of beauty In traversing also the large green courts with sunshine beaming on the gray walls and glancing along the velvet turf my mind was engrossed with the image of the tender the gallant but hapless Surrey and his account of his loiterings about them in his stripling days when enamoured of the Lady Geraldine | F |
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| With eyes cast up unto the maiden's tower | D |
| With easie sighs such as men draw in love | G |
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| In this mood of mere poetical susceptibility I visited the ancient keep of the castle where James the First of Scotland the pride and theme of Scottish poets and historians was for many years of his youth detained a prisoner of state It is a large gray tower that has stood the brunt of ages and is still in good preservation It stands on a mound which elevates it above the other parts of the castle and a great flight of steps leads to the interior In the armory a Gothic hall furnished with weapons of various kinds and ages I was shown a coat of armor hanging against the wall which had once belonged to James Hence I was conducted up a staircase to a suite of apartments of faded magnificence hung with storied tapestry which formed his prison and the scene of that passionate and fanciful amour which has woven into the web of his story the magical hues of poetry and fiction | H |
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| The whole history of this amiable but unfortunate prince is highly romantic At the tender age of eleven he was sent from home by his father Robert III and destined for the French court to be reared under the eye of the French monarch secure from the treachery and danger that surrounded the royal house of Scotland It was his mishap in the course of his voyage to fall into the hands of the English and he was detained prisoner by Henry IV notwithstanding that a truce existed between the two countries | I |
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| The intelligence of his capture coming in the train of many sorrows and disasters proved fatal to his unhappy father The news we are told was brought to him while at supper and did so overwhelm him with grief that he was almost ready to give up the ghost into the hands of the servants that attended him But being carried to his bedchamber he abstained from all food and in three days died of hunger and grief at Rothesay | I |
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| James was detained in captivity above eighteen years but though deprived of personal liberty he was treated with the respect due to his rank Care was taken to instruct him in all the branches of useful knowledge cultivated at that period and to give him those mental and personal accomplishments deemed proper for a prince Perhaps in this respect his imprisonment was an advantage as it enabled him to apply himself the more exclusively to his improvement and quietly to imbibe that rich fund of knowledge and to cherish those elegant tastes which have given such a lustre to his memory The picture drawn of him in early life by the Scottish historians is highly captivating and seems rather the description of a hero of romance than of a character in real history He was well learnt we are told to fight with the sword to joust to tourney to wrestle to sing and dance he was an expert mediciner right crafty in playing both of lute and harp and sundry other instruments of music and was expert in grammar oratory and poetry | J |
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| With this combination of manly and delicate accomplishments fitting him to shine both in active and elegant life and calculated to give him an intense relish for joyous existence it must have been a severe trial in an age of bustle and chivalry to pass the spring time of his years in monotonous captivity It was the good fortune of James however to be gifted with a powerful poetic fancy and to be visited in his prison by the choicest inspirations of the muse Some minds corrode and grow inactive under the loss of personal liberty others grow morbid and irritable but it is the nature of the poet to become tender and imaginative in the loneliness of confinement He banquets upon the honey of his own thoughts and like the captive bird pours forth his soul in melody | J |
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| Have you not seen the nightingale | K |
| A pilgrim coop'd into a cage | L |
| How doth she chant her wonted tale | K |
| In that her lonely hermitage | M |
| Even there her charming melody doth prove | N |
| That all her boughs are trees her cage a grove | O |
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| Indeed it is the divine attribute of the imagination that it is irrepressible unconfinable that when the real world is shut out it can create a world for itself and with a necromantic power can conjure up glorious shapes and forms and brilliant visions to make solitude populous and irradiate the gloom of the dungeon Such was the world of pomp and pageant that lived round Tasso in his dismal cell at Ferrara when he conceived the splendid scenes of his Jerusalem and we may consider The King's Quair composed by James during his captivity at Windsor as another of those beautiful breakings forth of the soul from the restraint and gloom of the prison house | I |
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| The subject of the poem is his love for the lady Jane Beaufort daughter of the Earl of Somerset and a princess of the blood royal of England of whom he became enamoured in the course of his captivity What gives it a peculiar value is that it may be considered a transcript of the royal bard's true feelings and the story of his real loves and fortunes It is not often that sovereigns write poetry or that poets deal in fact It is gratifying to the pride of a common man to find a monarch thus suing as it were for admission into his closet and seeking to win his favor by administering to his pleasures It is a proof of the honest equality of intellectual competition which strips off all the trappings of factitious dignity brings the candidate down to a level with his fellow men and obliges him to depend on his own native powers for distinction It is curious too to get at the history of a monarch's heart and to find the simple affections of human nature throbbing under the ermine But James had learnt to be a poet before he was a king he was schooled in adversity and reared in the company of his own thoughts Monarchs have seldom time to parley with their hearts or to meditate their minds into poetry and had James been brought up amidst the adulation and gayety of a court we should never in all probability have had such a poem as the Quair | J |
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| I have been particularly interested by those parts of the poem which breathe his immediate thoughts concerning his situation or which are connected with the apartment in the Tower They have thus a personal and local charm and are given with such circumstantial truth as to make the reader present with the captive in his prison and the companion of his meditations | I |
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| Such is the account which he gives of his weariness of spirit and of the incident which first suggested the idea of writing the poem It was the still mid watch of a clear moonlight night the stars he says were twinkling as fire in the high vault of heaven and Cynthia rinsing her golden locks in Aquarius He lay in bed wakeful and restless and took a book to beguile the tedious hours The book he chose was Boetius' Consolations of Philosophy a work popular among the writers of that day and which had been translated by his great prototype Chaucer From the high eulogium in which he indulges it is evident this was one of his favorite volumes while in prison and indeed it is an admirable text book for meditation under adversity It is the legacy of a noble and enduring spirit purified by sorrow and suffering bequeathing to its successors in calamity the maxims of sweet morality and the trains of eloquent but simple reasoning by which it was enabled to bear up against the various ills of life It is a talisman which the unfortunate may treasure up in his bosom or like the good King James lay upon his nightly pillow | P |
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| After closing the volume he turns its contents over in his mind and gradually falls into a fit of musing on the fickleness of fortune the vicissitudes of his own life and the evils that had overtaken him even in his tender youth Suddenly he hears the bell ringing to matins but its sound chiming in with his melancholy fancies seems to him like a voice exhorting him to write his story In the spirit of poetic errantry he determines to comply with this intimation he therefore takes pen in hand makes with it a sign of the cross to implore a benediction and sallies forth into the fairy land of poetry There is something extremely fanciful in all this and it is interesting as furnishing a striking and beautiful instance of the simple manner in which whole trains of poetical thought are sometimes awakened and literary enterprises suggested to the mind | A |
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| In the course of his poem he more than once bewails the peculiar hardness of his fate thus doomed to lonely and inactive life and shut up from the freedom and pleasure of the world in which the meanest animal indulges unrestrained There is a sweetness however in his very complaints they are the lamentations of an amiable and social spirit at being denied the indulgence of its kind and generous propensities there is nothing in them harsh nor exaggerated they flow with a natural and touching pathos and are perhaps rendered more touching by their simple brevity They contrast finely with those elaborate and iterated repinings which we sometimes meet with in poetry the effusions of morbid minds sickening under miseries of their own creating and venting their bitterness upon an unoffending world James speaks of his privations with acute sensibility but having mentioned them passes on as if his manlv mind disdained to brood over unavoidable calamities When such a spirit breaks forth into complaint however brief we are aware how great must be the suffering that extorts the murmur We sympathize with James a romantic active and accomplished prince cut off in the lustihood of youth from all the enterprise the noble uses and vigorous delights of life as we do with Milton alive to all the beauties of nature and glories of art when he breathes forth brief but deep toned lamentations over his perpetual blindness | I |
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| Had not James evinced a deficiency of poetic artifice we might almost have suspected that these lowerings of gloomy reflection were meant as preparative to the brightest scene of his story and to contrast with that refulgence of light and loveliness that exhilarating accompaniment of bird and song and foliage and flower and all the revel of the year with which he ushers in the lady of his heart It is this scene in particular which throws all the magic of romance about the old castle keep He had risen he says at daybreak according to custom to escape from the dreary meditations of a sleepless pillow Bewailing in his chamber thus alone despairing of all joy and remedy for tired of thought and woe begone he had wandered to the window to indulge the captive's miserable solace of gazing wistfully upon the world from which he is excluded The window looked forth upon a small garden which lay at the foot of the tower It was a quiet sheltered spot adorned with arbors and green alleys and protected from the passing gaze by trees and hawthorn hedges | I |
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| Now was there made fast by the tower's wall | Q |
| A garden faire and in the corners set | R |
| An arbour green with wandis long and small | Q |
| Railed about and so with leaves beset | R |
| Was all the place and hawthorn hedges knet | R |
| That lyf was none walkyng there forbye | S |
| That might within scarce any wight espye | S |
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| So thick the branches and the leves grene | H |
| Beshaded all the alleys that there were | J |
| And midst of every arbour might be seen | H |
| The sharpe grene swete juniper | J |
| Growing so fair with branches here and there | J |
| That as it seemed to a lyf without | R |
| The boughs did spread the arbour all about | R |
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| And on the small grene twistis set | R |
| The lytel swete nightingales and sung | T |
| So loud and clear the hymnis consecrate | R |
| Of lovis use now soft now loud among | T |
| That all the garden and the wallis rung | T |
| Right of their song | U |
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| NOTE The language of the quotations is generally modernized | R |
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| It was the month of May when every thing was in bloom and he interprets the song of the nightingale into the language of his enamoured feeling | V |
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| Worship all ye that lovers be this May | W |
| For of your bliss the kalends are begun | H |
| And sing with us Away winter away | W |
| Come summer come the sweet season and sun | H |
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| As he gazes on the scene and listens to the notes of the birds he gradually relapses into one of those tender and undefinable reveries which fill the youthful bosom in this delicious season He wonders what this love may be of which he has so often read and which thus seems breathed forth in the quickening breath of May and melting all nature into ecstasy and song If it really be so great a felicity and if it be a boon thus generally dispensed to the most insignificant beings why is he alone cut off from its enjoyments | I |
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| Oft would I think O Lord what may this be | J |
| That love is of such noble myght and kynde | R |
| Loving his folke and such prosperitee | R |
| Is it of him as we in books do find | R |
| May he oure hertes setten and unbynd | R |
| Hath he upon oure hertes such maistrye | S |
| Or is all this but feynit fantasye | S |
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| For giff he be of so grete excellence | I |
| That he of every wight hath care and charge | X |
| What have I gilt to him or done offense | I |
| That I am thral'd and birdis go at large | X |
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| In the midst of his musing as he casts his eye downward he beholds the fairest and the freshest young floure that ever he had seen It is the lovely Lady Jane walking in the garden to enjoy the beauty of that fresh May morrowe Breaking thus suddenly upon his sight in a moment of loneliness and excited susceptibility she at once captivates the fancy of the romantic prince and becomes the object of his wandering wishes the sovereign of his ideal world | R |
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| There is in this charming scene an evident resemblance to the early part of Chaucer's Knight's Tale where Palamon and Arcite fall in love with Emilia whom they see walking in the garden of their prison Perhaps the similarity of the actual fact to the incident which he had read in Chaucer may have induced James to dwell on it in his poem His description of the Lady Jane is given in the picturesque and minute manner of his master and being doubtless taken from the life is a perfect portrait of a beauty of that day He dwells with the fondness of a lover on every article of her apparel from the net of pearl splendent with emeralds and sapphires that confined her golden hair even to the goodly chaine of small orfeverye about her neck whereby there hung a ruby in shape of a heart that seemed he says like a spark of fire burning upon her white bosom Her dress of white tissue was looped up to enable her to walk with more freedom She was accompanied by two female attendants and about her sported a little hound decorated with bells probably the small Italian hound of exquisite symmetry which was a parlor favorite and pet among the fashionable dames of ancient times James closes his description by a burst of general eulogium | W |
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| In her was youth beauty with humble port | R |
| Bounty richesse and womanly feature | J |
| God better knows than my pen can report | R |
| Wisdom largesse estate and cunning sure | J |
| In every point so guided her measure | J |
| In word in deed in shape in countenance | I |
| That nature might no more her child advance | I |
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| The departure of the Lady Jane from the garden puts an end to this transient riot of the heart With her departs the amorous illusion that had shed a temporary charm over the scene of his captivity and he relapses into loneliness now rendered tenfold more intolerable by this passing beam of unattainable beauty Through the long and weary day he repines at his unhappy lot and when evening approaches and Phoebus as he beautifully expresses it had bade farewell to every leaf and flower he still lingers at the window and laying his head upon the cold stone gives vent to a mingled flow of love and sorrow until gradually lulled by the mute melancholy of the twilight hour he lapses half sleeping half swoon into a vision which occupies the remainder of the poem and in which is allegorically shadowed out the history of his passion | H |
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| When he wakes from his trance he rises from his stony pillow and pacing his apartment full of dreary reflections questions his spirit whither it has been wandering whether indeed all that has passed before his dreaming fancy has been conjured up by preceding circumstances or whether it is a vision intended to comfort and assure him in his despondency If the latter he prays that some token may be sent to confirm the promise of happier days given him in his slumbers Suddenly a turtledove of the purest whiteness comes flying in at the window and alights upon his hand bearing in her bill a branch of red gilliflower on the leaves of which is written in letters of gold the following sentence | I |
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| Awake Awake I bring lover I bring | V |
| The newis glad that blissful is and sure | J |
| Of thy comfort now laugh and play and sing | V |
| For in the heaven decretit is thy cure | J |
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| He receives the branch with mingled hope and dread reads it with rapture and this he says was the first token of his succeeding happiness Whether this is a mere poetic fiction or whether the Lady Jane did actually send him a token of her favor in this romantic way remains to be determined according to the fate or fancy of the reader He concludes his poem by intimating that the promise conveyed in the vision and by the flower is fulfilled by his being restored to liberty and made happy in the possession of the sovereign of his heart | R |
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| Such is the poetical account given by James of his love adventures in Windsor Castle How much of it is absolute fact and how much the embellishment of fancy it is fruitless to conjecture let us not however reject every romantic incident as incompatible with real life but let us sometimes take a poet at his word I have noticed merely those parts of the poem immediately connected with the tower and have passed over a large part which was in the allegorical vein so much cultivated at that day The language of course is quaint and antiquated so that the beauty of many of its golden phrases will scarcely be perceived at the present day but it is impossible not to be charmed with the genuine sentiment the delightful artlessness and urbanity which prevail throughout it The descriptions of Nature too with which it is embellished are given with a truth a discrimination and a freshness worthy of the most cultivated periods of the art | R |
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| As an amatory poem it is edifying in these days of coarser thinking to notice the nature refinement and exquisite delicacy which pervade it banishing every gross thought or immodest expression and presenting female loveliness clothed in all its chivalrous attributes of almost supernatural purity and grace | I |
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| James flourished nearly about the time of Chaucer and Gower and was evidently an admirer and studier of their writings Indeed in one of his stanzas he acknowledges them as his masters and in some parts of his poem we find traces of similarity to their productions more especially to those of Chaucer There are always however general features of resemblance in the works of contemporary authors which are not so much borrowed from each other as from the times Writers like bees toll their sweets in the wide world they incorporate with their own conceptions the anecdotes and thoughts current in society and thus each generation has some features in common characteristic of the age in which it lives | I |
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| James belongs to one of the most brilliant eras of our literary history and establishes the claims of his country to a participation in its primitive honors Whilst a small cluster of English writers are constantly cited as the fathers of our verse the name of their great Scottish compeer is apt to be passed over in silence but he is evidently worthy of being enrolled in that little constellation of remote but never failing luminaries who shine in the highest firmament of literature and who like morning stars sang together at the bright dawning of British poesy | I |
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| Such of my readers as may not be familiar with Scottish history though the manner in which it has of late been woven with captivating fiction has made it a universal study may be curious to learn something of the subsequent history of James and the fortunes of his love His passion for the Lady Jane as it was the solace of his captivity so it facilitated his release it being imagined by the Court that a connection with the blood royal of England would attach him to its own interests He was ultimately restored to his liberty and crown having previously espoused the Lady Jane who accompanied him to Scotland and made him a most tender and devoted wife | Y |
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| He found his kingdom in great confusion the feudal chieftains having taken advantage of the troubles and irregularities of a long interregnum to strengthen themselves n their possessions and place themselves above the power of the laws James sought to found the basis of his power in the affections of his people He attached the lower orders to him by the reformation of abuses the temperate and equable administration of justice the encouragement of the arts of peace and the promotion of every thing that could diffuse comfort competency and innocent enjoyment through the humblest ranks of society He mingled occasionally among the common people in disguise visited their firesides entered into their cares their pursuits and their amusements informed himself of the mechanical arts and how they could best be patronized and improved and was thus an all pervading spirit watching with a benevolent eye over the meanest of his subjects Having in this generous manner made himself strong in the hearts of the common people he turned himself to curb the power of the factious nobility to strip them of those dangerous immunities which they had usurped to punish such as had been guilty of flagrant offences and to bring the whole into proper obedience to the Crown For some time they bore this with outward submission but with secret impatience and brooding resentment A conspiracy was at length formed against his life at the head of which was his own uncle Robert Stewart Earl of Athol who being too old himself for the perpetration of the deed of blood instigated his grandson Sir Robert Stewart together with Sir Robert Graham and others of less note to commit the deed They broke into his bedchamber at the Dominican convent near Perth where he was residing and barbarously murdered him by oft repeated wounds His faithful queen rushing to throw her tender body between him and the sword was twice wounded in the ineffectual attempt to shield him from the assassin and it was not until she had been forcibly torn from his person that the murder was accomplished | R |
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| It was the recollection of this romantic tale of former times and of the golden little poem which had its birthplace in this tower that made me visit the old pile with more than common interest The suit of armor hanging up in the hall richly gilt and embellished as if to figure in the tourney brought the image of the gallant and romantic prince vividly before my imagination I paced the deserted chambers where he had composed his poem I leaned upon the window and endeavored to persuade myself it was the very one where he had been visited by his vision I looked out upon the spot where he had first seen the Lady Jane It was the same genial and joyous month the birds were again vying with each other in strains of liquid melody every thing was bursting into vegetation and budding forth the tender promise of the year Time which delights to obliterate the sterner memorials of human pride seems to have passed lightly over this little scene of poetry and love and to have withheld his desolating hand Several centuries have gone by yet the garden still flourishes at the foot of the tower It occupies what was once the moat of the keep and though some parts have been separated by dividing walls yet others have still their arbors and shaded walks as in the days of James and the whole is sheltered blooming and retired There is a charm about the spot that has been printed by the footsteps of departed beauty and consecrated by the inspirations of the poet which is heightened rather than impaired by the lapse of ages It is indeed the gift of poetry to hallow every place in which it moves to breathe around nature an odor more exquisite than the perfume of the rose and to shed over it a tint more magical than the blush of morning | V |
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| Others may dwell on the illustrious deeds of James as a warrior and a legislator but I have delighted to view him merely as the companion of his fellow men the benefactor of the human heart stooping from his high estate to sow the sweet flowers of poetry and song in the paths of common life He was the first to cultivate the vigorous and hardy plant of Scottish genius which has since become so prolific of the most wholesome and highly flavored fruit He carried with him into the sterner regions of the north all the fertilizing arts of southern refinement He did every thing in his power to win his countrymen to the gay the elegant and gentle arts which soften and refine the character of a people and wreathe a grace round the loftiness of a proud and warlike spirit He wrote many poems which unfortunately for the fulness of his fame are now lost to the world one which is still preserved called Christ's Kirk of the Green shows how diligently he had made himself acquainted with the rustic sports and pastimes which constitute such a source of kind and social feeling among the Scottish peasantry and with what simple and happy humor he could enter into their enjoyments He contributed greatly to improve the national music and traces of his tender sentiment and elegant taste are said to exist in those witching airs still piped among the wild mountains and lonely glens of Scotland He has thus connected his image with whatever is most gracious and endearing in the national character he has embalmed his memory in song and floated his name to after ages in the rich streams of Scottish melody The recollection of these things was kindling at my heart as I paced the silent scene of his imprisonment I have visited Vaucluse with as much enthusiasm as a pilgrim would visit the shrine at Loretto but I have never felt more poetical devotion than when contemplating the old tower and the little garden at Windsor and musing over the romantic loves of the Lady Jane and the Royal Poet of Scotland | R |
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Washington Irving
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