To Cynthia: On Her Embraces
If thou a reason dost desire to know,
My dearest Cynthia, why I love thee so,
As when I do enjoy all thy love’s store
I am not yet content, but seek for more.
When we do kiss so often, as the tale
Of kisses doth outvie the winter’s hail:
When I do print them on more close and sweet
Than shells of scallops, cockles when they meet,
Yet am not satisfied. When I do close
Thee nearer to me than the ivy grows
Unto the oak, when those white arms of thine
Clip me more close than doth the elm the vine;
When, naked both, thou seemest not to be
Contiguous, but continuous parts of me,
And we in bodies are together brought
So near, our souls may know each other’s thought
Without a whisper, yet I do aspire
To come more close to thee, and to be nigher,
Know, ’twas well said that spirits are too high
For bodies, when they meet, to satisfy;
Our souls having like forms of light and sense,
Proceeding from the same intelligence,
Desire to mix like to two water drops,
Whose union some little hindrance stops,
Which meeting both together would be one.
For in the steel, and in the adamant stone,
One and the same magnetic soul is cause
That with such unseen chains each other draws:
So our souls now divided brook ’t not well
That being one they should asunder dwell.
Then let me die, that so my soul being free
May join with that her other half in thee,
For when in thy pure self it shall abide
It shall assume a body glorified,
Being in that high bliss; nor shall we twain
Or wish to meet, or fear to part again.
We can largely thank T.S. Eliot for the rediscovery of the metaphyiscal poets (doesn’t “metaphysicians” sound better? or why not “metaphysicists”?). Once confined to obscurity for over two centuries, their work has been subject to a just reappraisal since the 1920’s and the permanent place of at least three of them–John Donne, George Herbert and Andrew Marvell–is a given today in just about any anthology of English language poetry that covers that period. The complexity of their language and their metrical versatility, once looked down upon by the best of critics, are today a large part of their appeal, and one feels in them a close affinity with the style of modern poetry.
It is very important however to point out that the metaphysical school is far bigger than the three aforementioned poets and that significant work ought to be done in order to bring their forgotten contemporaries to light–poets often injudiciously dismissed, not because they are less capable but simply because not enough critical illumination has been cast on the darkness in which they dwell.
One of these was Sir Francis Kynaston who lived between 1587 and 1642. His very meagre Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Kynaston) does a deceptively unjust service in perpetuating the idea that he was just another inconspicuous figure in Tudor history who wrote second-rate verse. Open the article if you don’t believe me and note how he is presented in the introductory paragraph as a “lawyer” and “courtier” before mentioning that he wrote poetry, the quality of which is deceitfully dismissed in the following sentence, “He is noted for his translation of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde into Latin verse”.
I can understand why someone would pass over Kynaston’s poetry after reading that. But here I’ll take the opportunity to flaunt the authority of Wikipedia and shockingly reveal that he actually produced his own works (lo and behold, in English too!), and that these are poems that are far more relevant to our time. The above poem is one of them, and comes from a sequence collectively called the Cynthiades.
Form
Iambic pentameter in rhyming couplets
Analysis
The title summarises it quite well. He is talking to his lover, Cynthia, about her embraces. More than that, the poem mentions how insufficient they are in fulfilling his desires to truly become one with her. There are particularly intimate moments when he seems to come close, but never quite gets there. One can’t help but frolic in the verbal succulence of it all:
When I do close
Thee nearer to me than the ivy grows
Unto the oak, when those white arms of thine
Clip me more close than doth the elm the vine;
When, naked both, thou seemest not to be
Contiguous, but continuous parts of me,
And we in bodies are together brought
So near, our souls may know each other’s thought
Without a whisper, yet I do aspire
To come more close to thee, and to be nigher,
Kynaston goes on to contrast the soul that strives for union with another yet is hampered by the imprisoning body:
Know, ’twas well said that spirits are too high
For bodies, when they meet, to satisfy;
Our souls having like forms of light and sense,
Proceeding from the same intelligence,
Desire to mix like to two water drops,
Whose union some little hindrance stops,
Which meeting both together would be one.
The soul’s liberation and desire is only possible with the body’s death. The final part of the poem is therefore expressed as a death-wish:
Then let me die, that so my soul being free
May join with that her other half in thee,
For when in thy pure self it shall abide
It shall assume a body glorified,
Being in that high bliss; nor shall we twain
Or wish to meet, or fear to part again.
For anyone who wishes to read more Francis Kynaston or other poets of the metaphysical manner, visit the following pages on this website:
Sir Henry Wotton: https://www.lookingtoleeward.se/sir-henry-wotton-1568-1639/
Sir Robert Aytoun: https://www.lookingtoleeward.se/sir-robert-aytoun-1570-1638/
John Donne: https://www.lookingtoleeward.se/john-donne-1572-1631/
Aurelian Townshend: https://www.lookingtoleeward.se/aurelian-townshend-1583-1649/
Edward Herbert: https://www.lookingtoleeward.se/edward-herbert-1583-1648/
Sir Francis Kynaston: https://www.lookingtoleeward.se/sir-francis-kynaston-1587-1642/
Henry King: https://www.lookingtoleeward.se/henry-king-1592-1669/
Francis Quarles: https://www.lookingtoleeward.se/francis-quarles-1592-1644/
George Herbert: https://www.lookingtoleeward.se/george-herbert-1593-1633/
Thomas Carew: https://www.lookingtoleeward.se/thomas-carew-1595-1640/
James Paulin: https://www.lookingtoleeward.se/james-paulin-16th-17th-century/
Richard Crashaw: https://www.lookingtoleeward.se/richard-crashaw-1613-1649/
Thomas Philipot: https://www.lookingtoleeward.se/thomas-philipot-ca-1616-1682/
Andrew Marvell: https://www.lookingtoleeward.se/andrew-marvell-1621-1678/