I’m trying to teach myself to analyse the formats of Renaissance poetry, as you do. I’ve got a piece that I thought might be poulter’s measure (a 14-syllable line followed by a 12-syllable one), but it seems instead by my count to be straight fourteener. Do you agree? All thoughts and suggestions welcome …!

This world is full of snares and trappes, temptations unto sinne,
As well in generations past, as this that we live in.
Compare our selves unto a tree, which springeth up with sap,
And brings forth branches goodly ones, which taste of Adams hap.
And as this tree doth grow to strength, the owner of the wood,
May lop away the branches faire as them which are not good.
So hath he lopt away from us a Ladie Branch of price,
That Lived here right worshipfull, disdaining every vice:
Whose lacke her friends do much bewaile, but especially the poore,
Whom she continually did feede, aboard and at her doore.

(This piece doesn’t have stanzas, so I’ve just taken what seems a logical chunk out of it.)

And no, I’m not claiming this as a lost literary masterpiece…

I’ve been reading a very handy 1956 thesis – happily available on microfilm – Conventions and Characteristics of the English Funeral Elegy of the Earlier Seventeenth Century, (University of Missouri). And I just had to share what the author, H.H. Hale, describes as the “most graceless” example, Francis Beaumont’s “Elegy on the Lady Markham” a relative of the influential Lucy, Countess of Bedford.

The poet tells his readers that although he never saw Lady Markham in life he fell in love with her corpse, and likes the fact he can now…

Her grassgreene mantle, and her sheet display,
And touc her naked, and though th’ envious mould
In which she lies uncovered, moist and cold,
Strive to corrupt her, she will not abide
With any art her blemishes to hide…”

He directs the worms to gently eat her flesh, to eat into her ear-lobes to form holes for earrings, and finally to eat her epitaph upon her forehead: “Living, she was young, faire, and full of wit / Dead, all her faults are in her forehead writ.”
p. 38-39

Seriously sick!

… or just those who didn’t get hopelessly bored at Sunday school, I’m working on a late 16th-century elegy for a twice-widowed rich London woman, with the following passage, which refers, I assume, to women from the Bible:

So that hir three-fold godly life alludeth
To virgin Ruth, wife Sara, widdow Judith

I’m struggling to make sense of this.

The Bible Ruth that seems to get all the Google hits is a widow, so that is a bit puzzling.

Sara, if the wife of Abraham hardly seems to present an ideal life.

The lead widow Judith is the one who cut off Holofernes’ head, but although she’s a favourite figure for painting she hardly seems like an ideal model.

As ever, TIA!