Aemilia Lanyer

Poems » emilia lanyer » cruelty and love

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.

the bride
 
 
My love looks like a girl to-night,
But she is old.
The plaits that lie along her pill... [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]
good husbands make unhappy wives
 
 
Good husbands make unhappy wives
so do bad husbands, just as often;
but the unhappiness of... [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]
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]
when i read shakespeare --
 
 
When I read Shakespeare I am struck with wonder
that such trivial people should muse and thunde... [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]
people
 
 
The great gold apples of night
Hang from the street's long bough
Dripping their light... [read poem]
relativity
 
 
I like relativity and quantum theories
because I don't understand them
and they make me fe... [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]
miss gee
 
 
Let me tell you a little story
About Miss Edith Gee;
She lived in Clevedon Terrace
... [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]
figs
 
 
The proper way to eat a fig, in society,
Is to split it in four, holding it by the stump,
... [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]
wages
 
 
The wages of work is cash.
The wages of cash is want more cash.
The wages of want more cas... [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]
five songs - ii
 
 
That night when joy began
Our narrowest veins to flush,
We waited for the flash
Of mo... [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]
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 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]
swan
 
 
Far-off
at the core of space
at the quick
of time
beats
and goes still... [read poem]
under which lyre
 
 
A Reactionary Tract for the Times

Ares at last has quit the field,
The bloodstains... [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 two
 
 
You are the town and we are the clock.
We are the guardians of the gate in the rock
The Tw... [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]
gloire de dijon
 
 
When she rises in the morning
I linger to watch her;
She spreads the bath-cloth underneath... [read poem]

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