#anne finch

[oh-dear-so-queer]

There were many interlinked passionate friendships at the Stuart court: Anne Killgrew, a maid of honour at the court, wrote a series of passionate poems to 'Eudora' that were explicitly love poems but so respectable as to be published after her death by her father. A contemporary, Countess of Winchilsea Anne Finch, who wrote as 'Ardelia', composed an erotic love poem to Anne Tufton, Countess of Salisbury, claiming to be a white mouse that might be caressed, creep into her 'brown tresses' and be admitted to her bosom.

"Normal Women: 900 Years of Making History" - Philippa Gregory

[mari--lace]

Alas! A woman that attempts the pen,

Such a presumptuous creature is esteemed,

The fault can by no virtue be redeemed.

They tell us we mistake our sex and way;

Good breeding, fashion, dancing, dressing, play,

Are the accomplishments we should desire;

To write, or read, or think, or to inquire,

Would cloud our beauty, and exhaust our time,

And interrupt the conquests of our prime,

Whilst the dull manage of a servile house

Is held by some our utmost art and use.

{Anne Finch, 1661-1720}

[bibliomancyoracle]

When a sedate content the spirit feels, And no fierce light disturbs, whilst it reveals;

*

from “A Nocturnal Reverie” by Anne Finch

[elizabethanism]

Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature, especially that written by women, was anything but old hat. Against tremendous odds, without anyone giving them the right to take up the pen or a proper education, women such as Anne Finch, Jane Austen, George Eliot, the Brontës, and Emily Dickinson had taken up the pen anyway, not only joining in the grand literary project but, if you could believe Gilbert and Gubar, creating a new literature at the same time, playing a man's game while subverting it.

The marriage Plot, Jeffrey Eugenides

[soracities]

Come—I’ll trace you one final autumn--

Annie Finch, from ‘Final Autumn’

[the-final-sentence]

And education’s, more than nature’s fools, Debarred from all improvements of the mind, And to be dull, expected and designed; And if some one would soar above the rest, With warmer fancy, and ambition pressed, So strong th’ opposing faction still appears, The hopes to thrive can ne’er outweigh the fears, Be cautioned then my Muse, and still retired; Nor be despised, aiming to be admired; Conscious of wants, still with contracted wing, To some few friends, and to thy sorrows sing; For groves of laurel thou wert never meant; Be dark enough thy shades, and be thou there content.

Anne Finch, from “The Introduction”

[woodlandtrust]

The Tree - Anne Finch

Fair tree! for thy delightful shade 'Tis just that some return be made; Sure some return is due from me To thy cool shadows, and to thee. When thou to birds dost shelter give, Thou music dost from them receive; If travellers beneath thee stay Till storms have worn themselves away, That time in praising thee they spend And thy protecting pow'r commend. The shepherd here, from scorching freed, Tunes to thy dancing leaves his reed; Whilst his lov'd nymph, in thanks, bestows Her flow'ry chaplets on thy boughs. Shall I then only silent be, And no return be made by me? No; let this wish upon thee wait, And still to flourish be thy fate. To future ages may'st thou stand Untouch'd by the rash workman's hand, Till that large stock of sap is spent, Which gives thy summer's ornament; Till the fierce winds, that vainly strive To shock thy greatness whilst alive, Shall on thy lifeless hour attend, Prevent the axe, and grace thy end; Their scatter'd strength together call And to the clouds proclaim thy fall; Who then their ev'ning dews may spare When thou no longer art their care, But shalt, like ancient heroes, burn, And some bright hearth be made thy urn.

[blogdemocratesjr]

Marcel Antonio

Discovering — and falling in love with — a new writer is like going to a high school reunion and locking eyes with a handsome stranger across the room as you wonder, was he there all along?

—Elliott Holt

For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes The still sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue.—And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things.

—William Wordsworth, “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey”

If the Possession of Imperial sway Thou hads’t by Death unhappy Prince resign’d And to a mournfull successour made way Whilst All was uncontested, All combin’d, How had the streets, how had the Palace rung, In praise of thy acknowledg’d Worth; What had our num’rous Writers then brought forth, What melancholly Dirges had they sung, What weeping Elegy’s prepar’d, If not from loyal grief, yett to obtain reward.

—Countess of Winchilsea Anne Finch, from "Upon the Death of King James II"