Sir Walter Raleigh at Sherborne

An Introduction to Sherborne Castle

Dorset History

Richard Burton reads A Passionate Man's Pilgrimage by Sir Walter Raleigh

The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd

Selected poems and works

From the scaffold

A fascinating visit last week. An extraordinary painting: The Procession of Queen Elizabeth I

Portraits of Raleigh

Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery


Farewell to the Court

Like truthless dreams, so are my joys expir'd,
And past return are all my dandled days;
My love misled, and fancy quite retir'd--
Of all which pass'd the sorrow only stays.

My lost delights, now clean from sight of land,
Have left me all alone in unknown ways;
My mind to woe, my life in fortune's hand--
Of all which pass'd the sorrow only stays.

As in a country strange, without companion,
I only wail the wrong of death's delays,
Whose sweet spring spent, whose summer well-nigh done--
Of all which pass'd only the sorrow stays.

Whom care forewarns, ere age and winter cold,
To haste me hence to find my fortune's fold.


From The Lie


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 court and church reply,

Then give them both the lie... 

Tell men of high condition

That manage the estate,

Their purpose is ambition,

Their practice only hate:

And if they make reply,

Then give them all the lie.


Notes

I like the phrase "all my dandled days" in the first poem. What does Raleigh mean by "dandled days"? Here's one explanation I found in a word forum online:

'He may either be referring to his infancy (where dandled would probably be quite literal) or to his earlier life, where the extended sense of entertained, pampered, treated fondly, etc., might apply. Here are a couple quotations from around the same time which show the transferred sense:

"Which did entertain and dandle him with all manner of delights."
"By blindness thou art blest; By dotage dandled to perpetual smiles." '

There is a good chapter on "The Atheism of Sir Walter Raleigh", in Dorset Elizabethans, At Home and Abroad, by Rachel Lloyd (John Murray, 1967).

"When I was gone she sent her memory
More strong than were ten thousand ships of war"