She came to us in Autumn
A world of Red and Gold
A land already dying
A life forever Old
She grew up in the Winter
Horizons Light and Cold
Waiting, always Watching
Bought but never Sold
She left us in the Springtime
Shook off our stranglehold
In search of any other
Who listened when she Told
She lost it all in Summer
When everything unrolled
And landed in the River…
…A Thread of Red and Gold
The Tailor’s Lamentation – 1685
A tailor with a young and beautiful wife has a weakness for whores. Then, one dark night, he has dallied with a doxy and is left stripped of clothes and money and must go back to his wife to explain…
…When she came in, she rang me a peal,
Ay, and her fist she forc’d me to feel…
There with her fist my face she did maul,
till at length I was forc’d to fall
Down on my knees, her love to obtain,
vowing I’d ne’er offend her again.
‘Rascal! (said she) I’ll pardon thee now!
If that this day you solemnly vow
To be obedient still to your wife.’
‘Yes, if you please to spare but my life.’
Ever since then she bears such a sway,
that I am forc’d her Laws to obey,
She is the Cock and I am the Hen:
this is my case, Oh! pity me then.
READ in these roses the sad story
Of my hard fate and your own glory.
In the white you may discover
The paleness of a fainting lover ;
In the red the flames still feeding
On my heart, with fresh wounds bleeding.
The white will tell you how I languish,
And the red express my anguish ;
The white my innocence displaying,
The red my martyrdom betraying.
The frowns that on your brow resided,
Have those roses thus divided.
Oh ! let your smiles but clear the weather,
And then they both shall grow together.
Thomas Carew(pronounced Carey) 1594-1640
Carew's poems, at their best, are brilliant lyrics of the purely sensuous order. They open to us, in his own phrase, "a mine of rich and pregnant fancy."
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Part of the beautiful poem that gave me a title
