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.
H26 Hesperides, within whose gardens grow
Notes. This relatively innocuous epitaph on Overbury is one of three that circulated both in manuscript and in the 1616 edition of Sir Thomas Overbury His Wife. In the published version, the author is identified as “R. Ca.”, whom White (221) tentatively identifies as the Cornishman Richard Carew.
“On Sir Thomas Overbury”
Hesperides,1 within whose gardens grow
Apples of gold, may well thy loss deplore,
For in those gardens they could never show
A tree so faire, and of such fruitfull store.
Grace was the roote, and thou thyself the tree,
5Sweet Councel2 were the berries grew on thee.
Wit was the branch that did adorne the stocke
Reason the leaf upon those branches spred.
Under thy shadow did the Muses flocke,
And by the as a Mantle covered.
10But what befell, O too much out of kinde
For thou wast blasted by a West-on3 winde.
Source. BL Add. MS 15227, fol. 27r
Other known sources. Overbury 2¶2r
H26
1 Hesperides: the mythic guardians of the golden apples. <back>
2 Councel: poems written on Overbury in 1615-16 idealized him as the perfect virtuous counsellor. <back>
3 West-on: a pun on “western” and the surname of the man convicted as principal in Overbury’s murder, his keeper Richard Weston. <back>
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