I lived from 1533-1603.
I was from England, and am in the English category.
I was influenced by poets Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser.
Elizabeth I was born in 1533 to Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Although she entertained many marriage proposals and flirted incessantly, she never married or had children. Elizabeth, the last of the Tudors, died at seventy years of age after a very successful forty-four year reign.
Read full description...
Elizabeth came to the throne in 1558 widely read and highly educated. She could translate Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, and German. During the age that was named for her, she became the muse of many artists and the subject of many poems and plays.
She was, as Herbert notes, the wellspring from which all creative works flowed and was, in essence, a co-creator of them. Writers considered her to embody the female power associated with such mythological and biblical figures as Judith, Esther, and Minerva, and some--like Edmund Spenser--worked to associate her with a romance tradition, the Arthurian legend, that legitimated her crown and gave to England a glorious past.
Queen Elizabeth contributed her own works to an English literary tradition through translations, speeches, and poetry.
Her poem "The Doubt of Future Foes" focuses on the danger presented to the crown, and hence to England as a whole, by the innumerable foes who confronted or would confront Elizabeth. It was inspired by the Queen's Roman Catholic cousin, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots (mother to James I of England, the first Stuart monarch), who sought refuge in England in 1568 to escape her rebellious subjects. Opponents to Elizabeth had often plotted to place Mary on the throne, but their attempts failed. The poem is notable for its sustained botanical imagery: when the Queen writes of "polling the tops" of her opponents, she clearly threatens them with beheading.
"On Monsieur's Departure" might have been written to the French duke of Anjou, a former suitor (although this is unlikely!), or to the Earl of Essex, one of her favorite courtiers (more likely!).
( information source athena.english.vt.edu )
My poetry
I grieve and dare not show my discontent,
I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,
19 lines, 8 comments
The doubt of future foes exiles my present joy,
And wit me warns to shun such snares as threaten mine annoy;
16 lines
Never think you fortune can bear the sway
Where virtue's force can cause her to obey.
2 lines, 1 comment
Oh Fortune, thy wresting wavering state
Hath fraught with cares my troubled wit,
10 lines
Oh, Fortune! how thy restlesse wavering state
Hath fraught with cares my troubled witt!
12 lines
Much suspected by me,
Nothing proved can be,
3 lines, 1 comment
No crooked leg, no bleared eye,
No part deformed out of kind,
4 lines, 3 comments
When I was fair and young, then favor graced me.
Of many was I sought their mistress for to be.
18 lines
Ah, silly Pug, wert thou so sore afraid?
Mourn not, my Wat, nor be thou so dismayed.
20 lines
Start a forum topic about this poet
|
|
