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Sir Walter Ralegh
1554?-1618
Ralegh was chiefly known as a military, political, and diplomatic genius and also as a charismatic adventurer. He wrote history and poetry of a most distinguished order. For all his brilliance and patriotic service, however, James I still ordered Ralegh's execution, and he was beheaded
Go, Soul, the body's guest,
Upon a thankless arrant:
Fear not to touch the best;
The truth shall be thy warrant:
Go, since I needs must die,
And give the world the lie.
Say to the court, it glows
And shines like rotten wood;
Say to the church it shows
What's good, and doth no good:
If church and court reply,
Then give them both the lie.
Tell potentates, they live
Acting by others' action:
Not loved unless they give,
Not strong but by affection:
If potentates reply,
Five potentates the lie.
Tell men of high condition
That manage the estate,
Their purpose in ambition,
Their practice only hate:
And if they once reply,
Then give them all the lie.
Tell them that brave is most
They beg for more by spending,
Who, in their greatest cost,
Seek nothing but commending:
And if they make reply,
Then give them all the lie.
Tell zeal it wants devotion,
Tell love it is but lust;
Tell time it metes but motion,
Tell flesh it is but dust:
And wish them not reply
For thou must give the lie.
Tell age it daily wasteth;
Tell honour how it alters;
Tell beauty how she blasteth;
Tell favour how it falters;
And as they shall reply,
Give every one the lie.
Tell wit how much it wrangles
In tickle points of niceness;
Tell wisdom she entangles
Herself in over-wiseness;
And when they do reply,
Straight give them both the lie.
Tell physic of her boldness;
Tell skill it is pretension;
Tell charity of coldness;
Tell law it is contention:
And as they do reply,
So give them still the lie.
Tell fortune of her blindness;
Tell nature of decay;
Tell friendship of unkindness;
Tell justice of delay:
And if they will reply,
Then give them all the lie.
Tell arts they have no soundness,
But vary by esteeming;
Tell schools they want profoundness,
And stand too much on seeming:
If arts and schools reply,
Give arts and schools the lie.
Tell faith it's fled the city;
Tell how the country erreth;
Tell manhood shakes off pity
And virtue least preferreth:
And if they do reply,
Spare no to give the lie.
So when thou hast, as I
Commanded thee, done blabbing
--Although to give the lie
Deserves no less than stabbing --
Stab at thee he that will.
No stab thy soul can kill.
Like Waller's "Go, Lovely Rose," "The Lie" begins as an "envoy" or "sending poem" with orders to a representative. Unlike Waller's poem, however, Ralegh's turns into a telling inventory of all that is wrong with the world - true in 1608 and still true, four centuries later.
Even such is time that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust,
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days.
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust.
Give me my scallop-shell of quiet,
My staff of faith to walk upon,
My scrip of joy, immortal diet,
My bottle of salvation,
My gown of glory, hope's true gage,
And thus I'll take my pilgrimage.
Blood must be my body's balmer,
No other balm will there be given,
Whilst my soul like a white palmer
Travels to the land of heaven,
Over the silver mountains,
Where spring the nectar foundations;
And there I'll kiss
the bowl of bliss,
And drink my eternal fill
On every milken hill.
My soul will be a-dry before,
But after it will ne'er thirst more.
And by the happy blissful way
More peaceful pilgrims I shall see,
That have shook off their gowns of clay
And go apparelled fresh like me.
I'll bring them first
To slake their first,
And then to taste those nectar suckets,
At the clear wells
Where sweetness dwells,
Drawn up by saints in crystal buckets.
And when our bottles and all we
Are filled with immortality,
Then the holy paths we'll travel,
Strewed with rubies thick as gravel,
Ceilings of diamonds, sapphire floors,
High walls of coral and pearl bowers.
From thence to heaven's bribeless hall
Where no corrupted voices brawl,
No conscience molten into gold,
Nor forged accusers bought and sold,
No cause deferred, nor vain-spent journey,
For there Christ is the King's Attorney,
Who pleads for all without degrees,
And he hath angels, but no fees.
When the grand twelve million jury
Of our sins with sinful fury
'Gainst our souls black verdicts give,
Christ pleads his death, and then we live.
Be thou my speaker, taintless pleader,
Unblotted lawyer, true proceeder;
Thou movest salvation even for alms,
Not with a bribed lawyer's palms.
And this is my eternal plea
To him that made heaven, earth and sea:
Seeing my flesh must die so soon,
And want a head to dine next noon,
Just at the stroke when my veins start and spread,
Set on my soul and everlasting head.
Then am I ready, like a palmer fit,
To tread those blest paths which before I writ.
Pilgimages have fascinated English writers since the Middle Ages: Chaucer, of
course, Spenser, Bunyan, T. S. Eliot (whose Four Quarters consists of ghostly
visits that have been called "totemic pilgrimages"), down to Philip Larkin,
whose "Church Going" represents a secular - but nonetheless passionate -
pilgrimage. Ralegh's poem, which, in 1604, seemed to presage his beheading in
1618, combines a nearly Spenserian allegory of equipment and symbols with a
sharp courtier's satire of earthly politics. Ralegh's authorship of this poem
has recently been seriously questioned.
©2004 B.J. Carper, All Rights Reserved
P.O. Box 125
Hudson, Indiana 46747
E-mail: ragdoll@bajeca.com
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