We British: The Poetry of a People. Andrew Marr

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ wife. Thomas Kyne pursued Anne, and had her arrested and brought back to Lincolnshire, but she escaped back to London and continued to preach. She was arrested and then brutally tortured, both at Newgate prison and the Tower of London, being almost split apart on the rack. Refusing to confess or to identify other Protestants she was burned alive at Smithfield, her body having first been sprinkled with gunpowder. She was so badly injured from her tortures that she had to be carried to her execution on a chair. Before she died, however, she composed poetry, of which the best-known example is her ballad from Newgate. If she hadn’t been tortured by then, she was about to be. It’s full, as we’d expect, of traditional Christian imagery:

      Like as the armed knight

      Appointed to the field,

      With this world will I fight

      And Faith shall be my shield.

      Faith is that weapon strong

      Which will not fail at need.

      My foes, therefore, among

      Therewith will I proceed.

      As it is had in strength

      And force of Christes way

      It will prevail at length

      Though all the devils say nay.

      Behind the familiar Arthurian images we can feel the urgent drumbeat of a rebellious mind; and indeed it’s a brave poem on many levels, including a direct attack on the royal authority:

      More enmyes now I have

      Than hairs upon my head.

      Let them not me deprave

      But fight thou in my stead.

      On thee my care I cast.

      For all their cruel spight

      I set not by their haste

      For thou art my delight.

      I am not she that list

      My anchor to let fall

      For every drizzling mist

      My ship substancial.

      Not oft use I to wright

      In prose nor yet in rime,

      Yet will I shew one sight

      That I saw in my time.

      I saw a rial throne

      Where Justice should have sit

      But in her stead was one

      Of moody cruel wit.

      Anne Askew’s horrific fate shouldn’t blind us to the fact that she was, in her way, a fanatic. In the sermons and other writings by the reformers, and also by their enemies, no quarter is given. Another poem by her, in which she pictures herself as a poor, blind woman in a garden full of dangers and snares – the garden being her own body – provides a window for us into the Reformation mind in its full urgency. In today’s world there is little, outside the more extreme edges of Islamism, that feels like this:

      A garden I have which is unknown,

      which God of his goodness gave to me,

      I mean my body, wherein I should have sown

      the seed of Christ’s true verity.

      My spirit within me is vexed sore,

      my flesh striveth against the same:

      My sorrows do increase more and more,

      my conscience suffereth most bitter pain:

      In Anne’s world, the gardener working on her body is Satan, busy trying to entrap her, with the older generation and the Catholics all on his side:

      Then this proud Gardener seeing me so blind,

      he thought on me to work his will,

      And flattered me with words so kind,

      to have me continue in my blindness still.

      He fed me then with lies and mocks,

      for venial sins he bid me go

      To give my money to stones and stocks,

      which was stark lies and nothing so.

      With stinking meat then was I fed,

      for to keep me from my salvation,

      I had trentals of mass, and bulls of lead,

      not one word spoken of Christ’s passion.

      In me was sown all kind of feigned seeds,

      with Popish ceremonies many a one,

      Masses of requiem with other juggling deeds,

      till God’s spirit out of my garden was gone …

      …‘Beware of a new learning,’ quoth he, ‘it lies,

      which is the thing I most abhor,

      Meddle not with it in any manner of wise,

      but do as your fathers have done before.’

      My trust I did put in the Devil’s works,

      thinking sufficient my soul to save,

      Being worse than either Jews or Turks,

      thus Christ of his merits I did deprave …

      Towards the end of the poem Anne’s imagery seems to prefigure her own violent ending. This is a world of savagery as well as of salvation:

      Strengthen me good Lord in thy truth to stand,

      for the bloody butchers have me at their will,

      With their slaughter knives ready drawn in their hand

      my simple carcass to devour and kill.

      O Lord forgive me mine offense,

      for I have offended thee very sore,

      Take therefore my sinful body from hence,

      Then shall I, vile creature, offend thee no more.

      I would with all creatures and faithful friends

      for to keep them from this Gardener’s СКАЧАТЬ