Poems

Poems of Undoubted Authorship

Queen Elizabeth 1 wrote many poems in here life, some as she was a princess, while imprisoned or as queen.

WRITTEN IN A FRENCH PSALTER.

Composed 1554-1555
by Princess Elizabeth (Elizabeth I)

No crooked leg, no bleared eye,
No part deformed out of kind,1
Nor yet so ugly half can be
As is the inward,2 suspicious mind.
Your loving mistress,
Elizabeth

1. out of kind, so as to be unnatural
2. inward, secret

Royal Library, Windsor Castle, holograph on the last page of text
in a copy of a French Psalter published in Paris ca. 1520. Elizabeth
inscribed these lines when she presented the psalter to a servant
or friend at some time before November 17, 1558.

IN DEFIANCE OF FORTUNE.

Composed 1568-1570
by Elizabeth I, Queen of England

Never think you Fortúne can bear the sway
Where virtue’s force can cause her to obey.

THE DOUBT OF FUTURE FOES

Composed 1568-1570.
by Elizabeth I, Queen of England

The doubt of future foes exiles my present joy,
And wit me warns to shun such snares as threaten mine annoy;
For falsehood now doth flow, and subjects’ faith doth ebb,
Which should not be if reason ruled or wisdom weaved the web.
But clouds of joys untried do cloak aspiring minds,
Which turn to rain of late repent by changèd course of winds.
The top of hope supposed, the root of rue shall be,
And fruitless all their grafted guile, as shortly ye shall see.
The dazzled eyes with pride, which great ambition blinds,
Shall be unsealed by worthy wights whose foresight falsehood finds.
The daughter of debate that discord aye doth sow
Shall reap no gain where former rule still peace hath taught to know.
No foreign banished wight shall anchor in this port;
Our realm brooks not seditious sects, let them elsewhere resort.
My rusty sword through rest shall first his edge employ
To poll their tops that seek such change or gape for future joy.

THAT WHICH OUR SOVEREIGN LADY WROTE IN DEFIANCE OF FORTUNE

Composed 1568-1570.
by Elizabeth I, Queen of England

Never think you fortune can bear the sway
Where virtue’s force can cause her to obey.

ON MONSIEUR’S DEPARTURE

Composed 1582.
by Elizabeth I, Queen of England

I grieve and dare not show my discontent,
I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,
I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,
I seem stark mute but inwardly do prate.
I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned,
Since from myself another self I turned.
My care is like my shadow in the sun,
Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,
Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done.
His too familiar care doth make me rue it.
No means I find to rid him from my breast,
Till by the end of things it be supprest.
Some gentler passion slide into my mind,
For I am soft and made of melting snow;
Or be more cruel, love, and so be kind.
Let me or float or sink, be high or low.
Or let me live with some more sweet content,
Or die and so forget what love ere meant.

Written in connection with Monsieur’s final leave-taking in 1582.

Source:

Elizabeth I: Collected Works. Leah S. Marcus,
Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth Rose, eds.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. 302-3.

Queen Elizabeth’s Translation of
Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy

[All human kind on earth]

ALL human kind on earth
From like beginning comes:
One father is of all,
One only all doth guide.
He gave to sun the beams
And horns on moon bestowed;
He men to earth did give
And signs to heaven.
He closed in limbs our soul
Fetched from the highest seat.
A noble seed therefore
Brought forth all mortal folk.
What crake you of your stock
Or forefathers old?
If your first spring and author
God you view,
No man bastard be,
Unless with vice the worst he feed
And leaveth so his birth.
Wr. 1593; pub. 1899)

Source:

The New Oxford Book of Sixteenth Century Verse. Emrys Jones, Ed.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. 184.