Phineas Fletcher

Phineas Fletcher Poems

Phineas Fletcher Biography

English poet, elder son of Dr Giles Fletcher, and brother of Giles the younger, was born at Cranbrook, Kent, and was baptized on the 8th of April 1582. He was admitted a scholar of Eton, and in 16oo entered King’s College, Cambridge. He graduated B.A. in 1604, and M.A. in 16o8, and was one of the contributors to Sorrow’s Joy (1603). His pastoral drama, Sicelides or Piscatory (pr. 1631) was written (1614) for performance before James I., but only produced after the king’s departure at King’s College. He had been ordained as a priest and before 1611 became a fellow of his college, but he left Cambridge before 1616, apparently because certain emoluments were refused him. He became chaplain to Sir Henry Willoughby, who presented him in 1621 to the rectory of Hilgay, Norfolk, where he married and spent the rest of his life. In 1627 he published Locustae, vel Pietas Jesuitica. The Locusts or Apollyonists, two parallel poems in Latin and English furiously attacking the Jesuits. Dr Grosart saw in this work one of the sources of Milton’s conception of Satan. Next year appeared an erotic poem, Britain's Ida, with Edmund Spenser’s name on the title-page. It is certainly not by Spenser, and is printed by Dr Grosart with the works of Phineas Fletcher. Sicelides, a play acted at King’s College in 1614, was printed in 1631. In 1632 appeared two theological prose treatises, The Way to Blessedness and Joy in Tribulation, and in 1633 his magnum opus, The Purple Island. The book was dedicated to his friend Edward Benlowes, and included his Piscatorie Eclsgs and other Poetical Miscellanies. He died in 165o, his will being proved by his widow on the 13th of December of that year. The Purple Island, or the Isle of Man, is a poem in twelve cantos describing in cumbrous allegory the physiological structure of the human body and the mind of man. The intellectual qualities are personified, while the veins are rivers, the bones the mountains of the island, the whole analogy being worked out with great ingenuity. The manner of Spenser is preserved throughout, but Fletcher never lost sight of his moral aim to lose himself in digressions like those of the Faerie Queene. What he gains in unity of design, however, he more than loses in human interest and action. The chief charm of the poem lies in its descriptions of rural scenery. The Piscatory Eclogues are pastorals, the characters of which are represented as fisher boys on the banks of the Cam, and are interesting for the light they cast on the biography of the poet himself (Thyrsil) and his father (Thelgon).)

The Best Poem Of Phineas Fletcher

The Divine Lover

I

Me Lord? can’st thou mispend
One word, misplace one look on me?
Call’st me thy Love, thy Friend?
Can this poor soul the object be
Of these love-glances, those life-kindling eyes?
What? I the Centre of thy arms embraces?
Of all thy labour I the prize?
Love never mocks, Truth never lies.
Oh how I quake: Hope fear, fear hope displaces:
I would, but cannot hope: such wondrous love amazes.

II

See, I am black as night,
See I am darkness: dark as hell.
Lord thou more fair than light;
Heav’ns Sun thy Shadow; can Sunns dwell
With Shades? ’twixt light, and darkness what commerce?
True: thou art darkness, I thy Light: my ray
Thy mists, and hellish foggs shall pierce.
With me, black soul, with me converse.
I make the foul December flowry May,
Turn thou thy night to me: I’le turn thy night to day.

III

See Lord, see I am dead:
Tomb’d in my self: my self my grave
A drudge: so born, so bred:
My self even to my self a slave.
Thou Freedom, Life: can Life, and Liberty
Love bondage, death? Thy Freedom I: I tyed
To loose thy bonds: be bound to me:
My Yoke shall ease, my bonds shall free.
Dead soul, thy Spring of life, my dying side:
There dye with me to live: to live in thee I dyed.

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