Polemic and paradox in Robert Southwell's lyric poems

   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)

Southwell turns the suffering of English Catholics into a cause of celebration--however ironic and inverted--and into a cautionary reminder that Catholics are not, as the title of the chapter suggests, out of the devil's power. As a result of their suffering they ought to be less likely to become spiritually complacent.

This somewhat gloomy reassurance is part of the tradition of the literature of consolation. (37) The double figuration of the soul as a ship and of the ship as a commonwealth--which thus has some sovereign claim against the claims of the actual state--repoliticizes the Christian valuation of tribulation. For South-well, the nautical metaphor comes with ideological and sociopolitical freight.

The Platonism of the poem turns it inward in the third stanza ("When inward eie to heavenly sights / Doth draw my longing harts desire"). The inward concentration combines with an upward pull; and one visualizes the kind of rapture one sees on the faces of figures in Mannerist painting.

The opposition the fourth stanza sets up between saint and shrine appears, for a moment, to concede the tension that is part of the iconoclastic challenge, which is also taken on by the Council of Trent's Decree on the "Invocation of Saints":

   the honour which is shown [saints] is referred to the prototypes
   which they represent, so that by means of the image which we kiss
   and before which we uncover the head and prostrate ourselves, we
   adore Christ and venerate the saints whose likeness they bear,

not because

   any divinity or virtue is believed to be in them by reason of
   which they are to be venerated, or that something is to be asked
   of them, or that trust is to be placed in image, as was done ...
   by the Gentiles who place their trust in images. (38)