Of Human Knowledge

Sir John Davies

 I know my body's of so frail a kind,
    As force without, fevers within can kill;
 I know the heavenly nature of my mind,
    But 'tis corrupted both in wit and will.

 I know my Soul hath power to know all things,
    Yet is she blind and ignorant in all;
 I know I am one of Nature's little kings,
    Yet to the least and vilest things am thrall.

 I know my life's a pain and but a span,
    I know my Sense is mock'd with every thing:
 And to conclude, I know myself a MAN,
    Which is a proud, and yet a wretched thing.

Commentary

From Nosce Teipsum (‘know thyself’), published in 1599.

One thing I like about the Elizabethan and metaphysical poets is the

wonderfully assured quality of their verse. The Sonnets are perhaps the canonical example of this: again and again Shakespeare uses the most unexpected of words, yet on closer inspection these words are revealed to be absolutely, incontrovertibly right for their contexts. Even the lesser poets of those days – Campion, Peele and yes, John Davies – seem to have this quality in spades.

I think it has a lot to do with the intellectual climate of the time.

The late 15th and early 16th centuries saw a confluence of factors – the humanistic ideals of the Renaissance, the emergence of England as a seafaring power, the maturing of the English language, the merging of Italianate and classical prosody with the folk songs and ballads of the English countryside – which combined to spark into life a poetry that was confident and self-assured, exploring brave new themes in a language perfectly suited to its purpose. English poetry had broken free of the intellectual and thematic limitations of the Middle Ages, and had yet to be entangled in the stifling conventions of the Augustan period. A true golden age, responsible for such gems as today’s poem.

— Thomas

A biography of Sir John Davies can be found at Luminarium:
http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/daviebio.htm

The Wondering Minstrels, poem #1336 · 28 August 2003

Poem selected by Abraham Thomas

Fair use

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From the Wondering Minstrels mailing list, 1999–2008.

David Wright · 29 August 2003

I loved the Davies and your commentary. John Davies seems t’have had a keen eye/ear for nonsense and overblown conceit, as illustrated in his wonderful Gulling Sonnets, a crown of poems parodizing ‘…the bastard Sonnets of the Rhymers base,
Which in this whisking age are daily born
To their own shames, and Poetry’s disgrace…’ such familiar literary conceits as a perverse affection for metaphor:

Gulling Sonnets 6.
by Sir John Davies

The sacred Muse that first made love divine
Hath made him naked and without attire,
But I will clothe him with this pen of mine
That all the world his fashion shall admire.
His hat of hope, his band of beauty fine,
His cloak of craft, his doublet of desire,
Grief for a girdle, shall about him twine,
His points of pride, his eyelet holes of ire, His hose of hate, his codpiece of conceit,
His stockings of stern strife, his shirt of shame, His garters of vainglory gay and fleet ;
His pantofles of passions I will frame,
Pumps of presumption shall adorn his feet
And socks of fullness exceeding sweet.

..to ill-chosen conceits, such as this legalistic love rhyme:

VIII.

My case is this, I love Zepheria bright,
Of her I hold my heart by fealty
Which I discharge to her perpetually,
Yet she thereof will never me acquit.
For now supposing I withhold her right,
She hath distrained my heart to satisfy
The duty which I never did deny,
And far away impounds it with despite.
I labour therefore justly to repleve
My heart which she unjustly doth impound, But quick conceit which now is love’s high shrieve Returns it as esloined, not to be found;
Then, which the law affords, I only crave Her heart for mine in withernam to have.

…to vapid rhetorical flourishes:

III.

WHAT Eagle can behould her sunbrighte eye,
her sunbrighte eye that lights the world with love, the world of Love wherein I live and die,
I live and die and divers changes prove,
I changes prove, yet still the same am I,
The same am I and never will remove,
never remove untill my soule doth flye,
my soule doth fly, and I surcease to move,
I cease to move which now am mov’d by you,
am mov’d by you that move all mortall hartes, all mortall hartes whose eyes yor eyes doth veiwe, Yor eyes doth veiwe whence Cupid shoots his darts, whence Cupid shoots his dartes and woundeth those that honor you and neuer were his foes.

…which reminds us that there was plenty of bad verse back then as well, and Sir John Davies was sick of it. It is a delight to see that the New York Review of Books has chosen to reissue D.B. Wyndham Lewis’s wonderful ‘The Stuffed Owl: An Anthology of Bad Verse.” As an occasional book reviewer, I can attest that there is nothing to make one appreciate good writing like a periodical innoculation with the bad stuff.

David Wright

Kathy M Dixon · 3 February 2008

Was just reading your comment about Dickinson’s poem “Ample make this bed.” How interesting…

You say, “when i hear the poem i hear love and coupling but when i read it in print i see death. isn’t that weird?

This is exactly how I feel too.

Thanks for sharing.
Kathy