Poem of the Week: The Lover’s Maze, attributed to Sir Walter Ralegh
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Version 0 of 1. The Lover’s Maze Her Face, her Tonge, her Wytte,So fayre, so sweete, so sharpe,First bent, then drew, then hytte,Myne Eye, mine Eare, my Hartt: Myne eye, mine eare, mine Harte,To Lyke, to Learne, to Love,Your face, your Tonge, your Wytt,Doth Leade, doth teache, doth move: Her face, her Tongue, her Wytt,With Beames, with Sound, with Arte,Doth bynde, doth Charm, doth Rule,Myne eye, myne eare, my harte. Myne eye, myne eare, my harte,With Lyfe, with Hope, with Skill,Your face, your Tonge, your wytt,Doth feed, doth feast, doth fill: Oh face, Oh Tonge, Oh Wytte,With Frownes, with Checkes, with Smarte,Wronge not, vex not, wound not,Mine eye, mine eare, my Harte. This Eye, This eare, This harte,Shall joy, shall bynd, shall sweareYour Face, your Tonge, your Wytt,To Serve, to Love, to Feare. It’s uncertain whether The Lover’s Maze was actually written by Ralegh, and the title is very unlikely to have been his. Still, it was a clever choice by whoever made the copy, neatly suited to the poem’s structure. The syntax is a sort of maze and perhaps it’s useful for the reader to have a hint from the title of the unusual pathways lying ahead. The interlocking triplicate puzzles are simple to solve, thanks to the ever-serviceable comma. To unravel the first stanza, and temporarily spoil the charm, we can read it as follows: “Her Face so fayre first bent mine Eye, Her Tonge so sweete then drew mine Ear, her Wytt so sharp then Hytte my Hart.” The form of that initial sentence (subject, adjective, verb, object) is varied in subsequent stanzas, as the poet takes advantage of the flexibility of Elizabethan sentence structure: but the parts of speech always dance, like the Graces, in groups of three. What might have been monotonous seems to scintillate. The poem takes advantage of the reader’s propensity to catch at extra grammatical connections even when they don’t make sense. Nothing ever seems quite the same: even the repeated lines do not invariably play the same roles. “Myne eye, myne eare, myne heart,” that little list of the courtly lover’s most essential organs (freely spelt), alternates between stating the object(s) of the sentence, as in the first stanza, and becoming the subject(s). Similarly with the lady’s special attributes – “her Face, her Tonge, her Wytte”. Only here, Ralegh rings further changes: third person possessive pronoun (“her”), second person (“your”) and then the apostrophe implied by “Oh”. This last marks a serious change of mood in the penultimate stanza. All those optimistic and positive words found earlier are replaced by negatives, and the stanza turns into a trio of pleas: “Oh face, Oh Tonge, Oh Wytte … ” Infinitives of the verbs occur in stanza two (line two) and add substance to the avowal in the last line of stanza six. It’s a graceful and assured performance, but that obsessive movement between actor and acted-upon reflects an emotional power-play which is itself a kind of maze. The grammatical maze is easy to navigate. The affective maze, for all its outward symmetry, is more disorienting. Those unrelenting monosyllables create a sense of rapid, breathless movement, a helter skelter of moods, a game of hide-and-seek both pleasurable and fearful. While the subject-verb-object relationships, once teased out, are usually straightforward, one at least gives pause for thought, and that’s the connection made between the apparent opposites, wit and heart. Wit, like Cupid’s dart, spikes the speaker’s heart in the first stanza, and goes on to rule and empower it An early definition of “wit” is “mental capacity”. Both this and the newer definition of “wit” as a sharp, even wounding verbal quickness, are seemingly implied. The heart, of course, signifies courage as well as emotional susceptibility. The skill that “wytt” appears to bestow on the poet’s “harte” in stanza four is perhaps verbal as well as erotic, and includes the poetic skill of the amorously inspired. All the verbs in this stanza imply satiety (“feed”, “feast”, “fill”). However, the speaker is well aware that wit is dangerous and can produce “smarte”. This most prized of his mistress’s attributes is finally noted as a quality to be viewed with caution. If the speaker is indeed Ralegh, or another courtier, it’s possible that the revered addressee is none other than Queen Bess herself. Whoever she may be, the lady is more than eye candy. Is it significant that “face” begins only twice with a capital letter, whereas Tonge and Wytt(e) are nearly always capitalised? Perhaps not, but for a modern reader used to the standardised typography, the impression may be of a woman valued more for her discourse than her looks. The Lover’s Maze could, of course, be one of those poems written for the sheer fun of playing with language and making tired poetic conventions sound fresh. There’s only so much to be done with the courtly love narrative, short of taking it to Shakespearean lengths of subversion. Ralegh’s display of syntactical wit is both ingenious and intense, even if it’s only the Muse of English Grammar tripping in trimeters through his beautifully manicured maze. |