Sir Walter Raleigh: In Life & Legend (26 page)

Ralegh then tells the story of Sidney's call to arms, death and later fame:

Three of Ralegh's best-known poems stand apart from the others and from each other, presenting special problems of attribution. 'As you came from the holy land of Walsingham' is a strange and beautiful poem unlike anything else in the Ralegh canon.
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 It seems to be based upon an older ballad, probably dating from before the Reformation, when pilgrimages to the shrine of the Virgin at Walsingham were common. In a dialogue between an ageing and discarded lover and a pilgrim, the lover asks the pilgrim whether he has met his beloved on his way back from the shrine:

The difficulty lies in knowing how much of what we have here comes from the original ballad, and how much is Ralegh's. One can only take the poem as it stands. It tells us of love, desertion and despair, favourite themes with Ralegh. The careless child is plainly Cupid, who is blind and wanton, playing with the affections of others, particularly of men. This love is changeable and impermanent, and is especially true of the love of women. True love is a 'durable fire', which burns always in the mind and never dies. The theme is echoed in such poems as 'Farewell false love',
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 'Lady farewell whom I in silence serve',
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 'Fortune hath taken thee away my love' and 'Like truthless dreams'.
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 Above all, it is the greater part of the matter of 'The Ocean, to Cynthia', as we shall see.
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Perhaps the most famous poem attributed to Ralegh is 'The Lie'. It first circulated in manuscript during the 1590s without any attribution, but replies to it written before 1603 assign it to Ralegh.
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However, Pierre Lefranc argued in 1968 against Ralegh's authorship on three principal grounds: first, that the manuscript attributions are late and unreliable; second, that the poem is of mediocre quality, below Ralegh's usual standard; and third, that the poem is the work of a puritan. He suggested that the author was in fact Dr Richard Lateware (or Latworth), Fellow of St John's College, Oxford, and later chaplain to Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy. Lefranc contends that Lateware was writing as an adherent of the Earl of Essex and that the object of the poem was to discredit Ralegh by associating his name with it. The counter-argument has been effectively put by Greenblatt, who undermines Lefranc's strictures on the quality of the poem and his assertion that it was written by a puritan. Critical opinion continues to uphold Ralegh's claim to the poem.
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Satirical poems were fashionable in the 1590s; Sir John Harington, John Donne, Joseph Hall and John Marston come to mind. It was also a time of dissatisfaction with the corruption of the Court, the defects of the Church, and the failure of the country's rulers.
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Ralegh attacks the contrast between appearance and reality in Court, Church, law-courts, universities and so on. His strategy is comprehensive rather than subtle or specific, but the poem moves with relentless force, delivering hammer-blows against corruption and deceit. It opens with an injunction to the soul 'to give the world the lie'. The reference to the poet's own death suggests that it may have been written in the shadow of execution in 1603; but the mood would fit equally well with Ralegh's depression and resentment during his exclusion from Court after 1592.

Ralegh then narrows his aim at his principal targets, Court and Church:

He continues to assault his targets through ten more stanzas: potentates, those that 'tend affairs of state' and high spenders -'those that brave it most' - are condemned. Love must be told that 'it is but lust', flesh that it is only dust, 'beauty that she boasteth', law that 'it is contention', faith that it has 'fled the city' and so on.

There are various contemporary replies, many by the Dr Lateware proposed as the original poet by Lefranc. Most, though not all of them, name Ralegh as the original author, usually by puns on his name:

'The Passionate Mans Pilgrimage' was first printed anonymously in 1604 at the end of a collection called Diaphantus, with the note that it was 'supposed to be written by one at the point of death' by decapitation.
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 There then seems to have been no copy made until 1625, after which there were several, in fourteen manuscripts, all except one attributing it to Ralegh. If he was indeed the author, the poem must have been written in December 1603, before his reprieve. The first stanza is well known:

The next five stanzas continue with a description of the pilgrim's journey:

A vivid picture is presented of the final stages of the journey:

The tone changes as the pilgrim enters the 'bribeles hall' of heaven 'where noe corrupted voyces brawl'. The hall is a judgement-hall, where Christ is the 'kings Atturny', who 'pleads for all of all degrees'. Unlike the 'twelve million jury' whose verdict goes against the poet, 'Christ pleads his death and then we live'. These stanzas recall 'The Lie', with their implied attack upon 'bribed lawyers'. The final stanza ends the poem with a touch of bravado and gallows humour: