When Windsor walls ...
by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517(?)-1547)
When Windesor walles sustained my wearied arme,
My hand my chyn, to ease my restlesse hedd,
Ech pleasant plot revested green with warm,
The blossomed bowes with lustie veare yspred,
The flowred meades, the weddyd birds so late
Myne eyes discovered. Than did to mynd resort
The joily woes, the hateles short debate,
The rakhell life that longes to loves disporte.
Wherewith, alas, myne hevy charge of care
Heapt in my breast brake forth against my will,
And smoky sighs that over cast the ayer.
My vapoured eyes such drery teares distill
The tender spring to quicken wher thei fall,
And I half bent to throwe me down withall.
My own attempt at a modern spelling version:
When Windsor walls sustained my wearied arm,
My hand my chin, to ease my restless head,
Each pleasant plot revested green with warm,
The blossomed boughs with lusty vere yspread,
The flowered meads, the wedded birds so late
Mine eyes discovered. Than did to mind resort
The joyly woes, the hateless short debate,
The rakehell life that longs to love’s disport.
Wherewith, alas, mine heavy charge of care
Heaped in my breast brake forth against my will,
And smoky sighs that overcast the air.
My vapoured eyes such dreary tears distill
The tender spring to quicken where they fall,
And I half bent to throw me down withall.
vere: Spring
joyly: jolly, joyous
In the time of Henry VIII, Windsor Castle was used as a prison.
The poet is locked up. He is a political prisoner, and his future is quite uncertain. But unlike his modern counterpart he can see out of his prison, and so watch the reawakening earth and be reminded of past Springs, and he has access to writing materials, and so can write poetry. Again, unlike a modern prisoner, suicide is a ready option. One leap from the battlements, and it would all be over.
A fall of the poet, like the fall of his tears, is the opposite of the spring of the new shoots out of the ground. Fall suggests Autumn, and a seasonal decline. (Here American readers have the advantage, since they have kept the old name of the season.) But the poem carries many double-meanings, very delicately done, and therefore very easy to miss. The charge in the heavy charge of care means burden or responsibility, but, as we find in the next two lines, it also means a charge of explosive. The poet ‘goes off’, like gunpowder in an untended cannon, filling the air with smoke. And so the sighs are smoky sighs. But smoky could mean misty in Surrey’s time, so smoky, too, carries a double meaning.
Similary restless in the second line. A physical restlessness entails motion, which is the opposite of the wearied arm, at rest on the stonework of the Castle. But a mental restlessness involves weariness, like the physical weariness of a body. The syntax suggests an analogous type of support: the wall supporting the arm, and the hand supporting the head. But in the meaning we see the contrast between physical exhaustion and mental torment. And arm is also the arms of war. Surrey is reminding us that he is a soldier, and he is tired of fighting.
We find the poet in the same posture as the sonnet closes, where half bent means half wanting to, as well as half bent over in his physical position. The vapoured eyes distilling dreary tears makes us think of some alchemical process, and vapour in the eyes suggests aging, as in Campion’s
Old age deafs not there our ears,
Nor vapour dims the eyes.
As a prisoner, Surrey is looking back to his happier times of freedom, and also thinking perhaps that his time of freedom was not used too well. Such regrets are no doubt common to the prisoner’s life. But his whole period of early manhood is compressed into three short phrases. The oxymoron joily woes, woe and joy combined, gives us the entirety. Hateless short debates is vague enough for the reader to be able to imagine a whole range of activities. These short debates without rancour might be discussions among students or soldiers, or arguments between lovers, or they may refer to friendly contests of a sporting kind. The rakehell life makes us think of the young man about town, or the soldier on leave, looking for pleasure in the arms of a woman. (Rakehell suggests riot and violence today, but perhaps it had gentler connotations in the sixteenth century.) As a prisoner, he is missing sex, of which the wedded birds, and the lusty Vere - in one sense of lusty - act as reminders.
The poem links old and new - a Renaissance, Hamlet-like figure set in a Chaucerian description of Spring. The language is at its most Mediaeval in the descriptions of Nature (lustie veare yspred). And also Mediaeval is the heavy alliteration, with its Windsor walls, smoky sighs, pleasant plot and blossomed boughs. The constant use of one syllable nouns with two syllable adjectives can seem slightly monotonous to modern ears (wearied arm, restless head, blossomed boughs, flowered meads ...) but our attention is held by the way in which the conventional (blossomed boughs) is mixed with the startling (joily woes).
Henry Howard, and his family, suffered terribly at the hands of the Tudors. And as far as his reputation as a poet goes, Henry’s problems did not end with his decapitation. It is a disadvantage to him that he is part of English history, and an aristocrat, as this warps poetic judgement. The very name Surrey is problematical. Since, unlike his father and his son, he never became Duke of Norfolk, he has always been remembered by a courtesy title rather than his more interesting real name, Howard. It is as if snobbish forces have insisted upon him having a title. His importance in the development of English poetry - he ‘invented’ blank verse and the Shakespearean sonnet - overtakes for some the poetry itself. A clumsy over-valuation in the 19th cetury led to an equally clumsy under-valuation in the 20th, usually based on simple comparisons with his contemporary, Wyatt. Let us hope for more balance in the 21st century.
