Polemic and paradox in Robert Southwell's lyric poems

Criticism, Fall, 2003 by Sadia Abbas

2.

"Man's Civille Warre"

   My hovering thoughts would flie to heaven
   And quiet nestle in the skie,
   Faine would my ship in vertues shore
   Without remove at anchor lie:

   But mounting thoughts are hailed downe
   With heavie poise of mortall load,
   And blustring stormes denie my ship
   In vertues haven secure aboade.

   When inward eie to heavenly sights
   Doth draw my longing harts desire,
   The world with jesses of delights
   Would to her pearch my thoughts retire.

   Fond fancie traines to pleasures lure,
   Though reason stiffly do repine.
   Though wisdome wooe me to the saint,
   Yet sense would win me to the shrine.

   Where reason loathes, there fancie loves,
   And overrules the captive will,
   Foes senses are to vertues lore,
   They draw the wit their wish to fill.

   Neede craves consent of soule to sence,
   Yet divers bents breed civil flay,
   Hard hap where halves must disagree,
   Or truce of halves the whole betray.

   O cruell fight where fighting fiend
   With love doth kill a favoring foe,
   Where peace with sense is warre with God,
   And self delighte the seed of woe.

   Dame pleasures drugges are steept in sinne,
   Their sugred taste dothe breede annoye,
   O fickle sense beware her ginne,
   Sell not thy soule for brittle joy.

"Man's Civille Warre" is at once tense admonition against letting the body's desires merge with the soul's, lament for the necessity of war within the self, and exhortation to engage in this war. The poem begins with a vision of the soul's desire and ends in a homily meant to ensure that the body remains subordinate, in order to attain the soul's aim of "nestling quietly in the sky."

The beginning of the poem images the self's divisions as the body pulls the speaker's ascending thoughts down from a scene of repose, tranquillity and safety. The first stanza is the quietest in the poem. Its rhythms are slower. The comfort of thoughts nestling quietly in the sky is matched by the calm of the ship at shore. But the thoughts on their way upward are brought down by the weight of the body in the second stanza ("but mounting thoughts are hailed downe"). "Downe" weights the line with a thud. The vision of the ship at shore is disturbed by the actuality of "blustring stormes"; and "blustring" prepares the reader for the discomfort of the sixth stanza. The quiet and relatively musical rhythms of the first stanza are at war with the harder consonants and jerkier rhythms introduced by the second.

Janelle notes the presence of the nautical allegory in Tottel's Miscellany and The Phoenix Nest (1593). (34) Southwell also uses the image of the ship in the first chapter of An Epistle of Comfort ("The first cause of Comfort in Tribulation is that it is a great presumption that we are out of the devil's power"), which shows his ear for the rhythms of prose and the ways in which he can put alliteration to affective use. (35)

   In our storm is their [the wicked's] time of singing, as is usual
   with the sirens, and they are the most sad in our calm and sorry in
   our comfort. And as the ship, while it is upon the main sea, is in a
   manner a castle or commonwealth by itself, and having all the souls
   hoisted up and swollen with the wind, and the banners displayed,
   danceth with a very lofty shew upon the waves and allureth every eye
   to behold its pride; but when it is come into the haven, it is
   straightway ransacked by the searcher, forced to pay custom; and the
   sails being gathered, the banners taken in, the anchors cast, it
   lieth quietly at ride and is little regarded. So they, who while
   they sailed upon the surge of wordly vanities and followed the tide
   of conscienceless course might range uncontrolled, and having the
   favorable gale of  authority to waft them forward, and honours and
   pomps to set them forth, were admired of the people; but if they
   chance, by God's calling, to retire themselves into the port of true
   faith and virtuous life to work their salvation, they are
   straightway searched and sacked, their sails gathered, the
   accustomed wind set, their glory disgraced, and they little or
   nothing esteemed. (36)