Aemilia Lanyer

Poems » emilia lanyer

Aemilia Lanyer
Emilia Lanier, also spelled Aemilia Lanyer, (1569-1645) was the first Englishwoman to assert herself as a professional poet through her single volume of poems, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611). Born Aemilia Bassano and part of the Lanier family tree, she was a member of the minor gentry through her father's appointment as a royal musician, and was apparently educated in the household by Susan Bertie, the dowager Countess of Kent. She was for several years the mistress of Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon, first cousin of Elizabeth I of England. She was married to court musician Alfonso Lanier in 1592 when she became pregnant, and the marriage was reportedly unhappy.

salve deus rex iudæorum
Now Pontius Pilate is to judge the Cause
Of faultlesse Jesus, who before him stan... [read poem]
bat
At evening, sitting on this terrace,
When the sun from the west, beyond Pisa, beyond the mounta... [read poem]
bavarian gentians
Not every man has gentians in his house
in Soft September, at slow, Sad Michaelmas.
... [read poem]
beautiful old age
It ought to be lovely to be old
to be full of the peace that comes of experience
and wrink... [read poem]
the blue jay
The blue jay with a crest on his head
Comes round the cabin in the snow.
He runs in the sn... [read poem]
the bride
My love looks like a girl to-night,
But she is old.
The plaits that lie along her pill... [read poem]
the enkindled spring
This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,
Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-f... [read poem]
figs
The proper way to eat a fig, in society,
Is to split it in four, holding it by the stump,
... [read poem]
gloire de dijon
When she rises in the morning
I linger to watch her;
She spreads the bath-cloth underneath... [read poem]
good husbands make unhappy wives
Good husbands make unhappy wives
so do bad husbands, just as often;
but the unhappiness of... [read poem]
the grudge of the old
The old ones want to be young, and they aren't young,
and it rankles, they ache when they see t... [read poem]
last words to miriam
Yours is the shame and sorrow,
But the disgrace is mine;
Your love was dark and thoro... [read poem]
cruelty and love / love on the farm
What large, dark hands are those at the window
Lifted, grasping the golden light
Which wea... [read poem]
lui et elle
She is large and matronly
And rather dirty,
A little sardonic-looking, as if domesticity h... [read poem]
man and bat
When I went into my room, at mid-morning,
Say ten o'clock ...
My room, a crash-box over th... [read poem]
the mosquito
When did you start your tricks
Monsieur?

What do you stand on such high legs for?... [read poem]
people
The great gold apples of night
Hang from the street's long bough
Dripping their light... [read poem]
piano
Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I s... [read poem]
red geranium and godly mignonette
Imagine that any mind ever thought a red geranium!
As if the redness of a red geranium c... [read poem]
relativity
I like relativity and quantum theories
because I don't understand them
and they make me fe... [read poem]
the revolutionary
Look at them standing there in authority
The pale-faces,
As if it could have any effect an... [read poem]
self-pity
I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough... [read poem]
the ship of death
Now it is autumn and the falling fruit
and the long journey towards oblivion.

The a... [read poem]
snake
A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink... [read poem]
stand up! --
Stand up, but not for Jesus!
It's a little late for that.
Stand up for justice and a jolly... [read poem]
swan
Far-off
at the core of space
at the quick
of time
beats
and goes still... [read poem]
tease
I will give you all my keys,
You shall be my châtelaine,
You shall enter as you... [read poem]
tortoise gallantry
Making his advances
He does not look at her, nor sniff at her,
No, not even sniff at her, ... [read poem]
tortoise shout
I thought he was dumb,
I said he was dumb,
Yet I've heard him cry.

First faint... [read poem]
wages
The wages of work is cash.
The wages of cash is want more cash.
The wages of want more cas... [read poem]
whales weep not!
They say the sea is cold, but the sea contains
the hottest blood of all, and the wildest, the m... [read poem]
when i read shakespeare --
When I read Shakespeare I am struck with wonder
that such trivial people should muse and thunde... [read poem]
the wild common
The quick sparks on the gorse bushes are leaping,
Little jets of sunlight-texture imitating fla... [read poem]
worm either way
If you live along with all the other people
and are just like them, and conform, and are nice... [read poem]
a youth mowing
There are four men mowing down by the Isar;
I can hear the swish of the scythe-strokes, four... [read poem]
under which lyre
A Reactionary Tract for the Times

Ares at last has quit the field,
The bloodstains... [read poem]
night mail
This is the Night Mail crossing the border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Lett... [read poem]
miss gee
Let me tell you a little story
About Miss Edith Gee;
She lived in Clevedon Terrace
... [read poem]
as the poets have mournfully sung
As the poets have mournfully sung,
Death takes the innocent young,
The rolling-in-money,... [read poem]
christmas oratio
Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,
Putting the decorations back into their... [read poem]
after reading a child's guide to modern physics
If all a top physicist knows
About the Truth be true,
Then, for all the so-and-so's,
... [read poem]
law like love
Law, say the gardeners, is the sun,
Law is the one
All gardeners obey
To-morrow, yest... [read poem]
o where are you going?
"O where are you going?" said reader to rider,
"That valley is fatal when furnaces burn,
Y... [read poem]
doggerel by a senior citizen
Our earth in 1969
Is not the planet I call mine,
The world, I mean, that gives me strength... [read poem]
o what is that sound
O what is that sound which so thrills the ear
Down in the valley drumming, drumming?
O... [read poem]
the unknown citizen
(To JS/07/M/378 This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State)

He was found by the Bureau ... [read poem]
the two
You are the town and we are the clock.
We are the guardians of the gate in the rock
The Tw... [read poem]
roman wall blues
Over the heather the wet wind blows,
I've lice in my tunic and a cold in my nose.

Th... [read poem]
the more loving one
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But ... [read poem]
villanelle
Time will say nothing but I told you so,
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I co... [read poem]
musee des beaux arts
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human... [read poem]
five songs - ii
That night when joy began
Our narrowest veins to flush,
We waited for the flash
Of mo... [read poem]
miranda
My dear one is mine as mirrors are lonely,
As the poor and sad are real to the good king,
... [read poem]
partition
Unbiased at least he was when he arrived on his mission,
Having never set eyes on the land he w... [read poem]
september 1, 1939
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever h... [read poem]
in time of war, xii
And the age ended, and the last deliverer died.
In bed, grown idle and unhappy; they were safe:... [read poem]
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