A web-based edition of early seventeenth-century political poetry from manuscript sources. It brings into the public domain over 350 poems, many of which have never before been published.
L4 Io to Buckingham great Admiral
Notes. This poem is another of the three circulating translations of James I’s Latin poem on Buckingham’s appointment in 1618-19 as Admiral of the Fleet, “Buckinghamus (Io) maris est praefectus et idem” (James VI and I 2.176). (The other two are “Now let us rejoyce sing Peans all” and “O Joyfull newse for Buckingham is nowe”.) As the poem notes, Buckingham already held the position of Master of the Horse, to which he had been appointed in 1616. Whereas the translation “Now let us rejoyce sing Peans all” is attributed in more than one source to James, it is perhaps more likely that this version is the work of another, unknown translator. The version in Bodleian MS Douce f.5 omits the final couplet, but is otherwise essentially the same.
Io1 to Buckingham great Admiral,
Io to Buckingham the man
That rules the horse, now rules the ocean.
Nor is it fitt, but hee that rules the deepes
Should rayne and checke the foaminge steedes he keeps.2
5Nor let this doubled power cloud any browe
Since the hie powers this president3 allowe.
Source. “Poems from a Seventeenth-Century Manuscript” 84
Other known sources. Bodleian MS Douce f.5, fol. 36v
L4
1 Io: an exclamation of praise or thanksgiving, used in James I’s Latin original. <back>
2 hee that rules...steedes he keeps: i.e. like the sea god Neptune, who ruled the sea and a team of horses. <back>
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