Final three (of six) stanzas of A Poem of Sir Walter Rawleighs ('Nature that washt her hands in milke')...', [ca. 1614-1615?] [manuscript].

Final three (of six) stanzas of A Poem of Sir Walter Rawleighs ('Nature that washt her hands in milke')...', [ca. 1614-1615?] [manuscript].

First line of this version: But time that nature doth dispise

3rd page of bifolium

Dealer's description: Ralegh's contribution [to a bifolium of poems, now Folger MS X.d.730], in a different but certainly contemporary secretary hand, is the final three (of six) six-line stanzas of his fine poem in praise of 'his mistresses Serena', beginning 'Nature that washt her hands in milk / And then forgot to dry them', first discovered in Harleian MS 6917 by Arthur Henry Bullen in 1902, and attributed to Ralegh on the strength of Ralegh's re-use of stanza six as his own epitaph. For those final lines, beginning 'OCruel Time which takes in trust'), with an added prayerful couplet, allegedly written out by Ralegh in his Bible shortly before his execution on 29 October 1618, became in his own century the single best-known exmaple of his verse, surviving in nearly one hundred C17 MS quotations, calendared by CELM as RaW 11-105. But the love poem (obviously his own) that Ralegh chose in extremis to extract, and which Bullen discovered, was never printed in its time and remains comparatively rare in manuscript (RaW 297-304.5). Two version exist, the shorter one of three stanzas (1, 2, and 4 in the Harleian-Bullen version) being known in four MS copies... Specimens of the three-stanza text (Michael Rudick (1999)'s no. 43A) are CELM's RaW 297, 298 (a late musical setting), 301 and 303, at Bodley (20), the British Library, and Harvard, while the six-stanza text (CELM RaW 299, 300, 302, and 304) is at the British Library (2), Folger, and Nottingham, to which we can now add the present MS of stanzas 4-6.

This is a PRELIMINARY RECORD. It may contain incorrect information. Please email catalog@folger.edu for assistance.

Main title from CELM RaW 197 (http://www.celm-ms.org.uk/authors/raleghsirwalter.html)

First two pages of this bifolium contain three poems described separately as Folger MS X.d.730 (item 1)

Great Britain -- England.

X.d.730 (item 2)

268674.2