Particular recommendation in the new typelist: English Verse.com, from which I found this pearl:
Henry King, Bishop of Chichester
Exequy on his Wife (extract)
But hark! my pulse, like a soft drum,
Beats my approach, tells thee I come;
And slow howe'er my marches be
I shall at last sit down by thee.
The thought of this bids me go on
And wait my dissolution
With hope and comfort. Dear—forgive
The crime—I am content to live
Divided, with but half a heart,
Till we shall meet and never part.
Both beautiful in itself - the image of the heartbeat as the harbinger of approaching death is immediately arresting - and useful to bear in mind next time some academic zombie tries to tell you that pre-modern marriages were by nature essentially patriarchal. Maybe Henry King was patriarchal - seventeenth-century churchmen would usually have some such tendency - but that was evidently far from the whole story. It never is the whole story.
Also at the same site, this late poem by John Donne, from that same extraordinary century:
A Hymn to God the Father
WILT Thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done;
For I have more.
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won
Others to sin, and made my sins their door?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallow'd in a score?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done;
For I have more.
I have a sin of fear, that when I've spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by Thyself that at my death Thy Son
Shall shine as He shines now and heretofore:
And having done that, Thou hast done;
I fear no more.
Is that a poem by a scared, sin-obsessed old man, his intelligence crushed by suffocating Christian dogma, or by a man (grown wise with age) making a serious attempt at coming to terms with his past faults, and not trying to pretend (as is usually the case today) that those faults aren't important or, worse, aren't faults at all? Well, in his later years, Donne was nothing if not serious.
For a last act I wanted to post the lyrics to a seventeenth-century anti-capitalist protest song called 'The Clothiers' Song', but they don't appear to be available. I can only recommend this site - the song is no.24 on the disc. (I have nothing to do with the performers or the production company, by the way.)
It begins:
'Of all sorts of callings that in England be
There is none that liveth so gallant as we;
Our trading maintains us as brave as a knight,
We scorn for to toil and taketh delight.
We heap up our bags of silver and gold,
and conscience and charity with us are cold;
By poor people's labour we fill up our purse,
Although we do get it with many a curse.'
And on for several verses in that vein. It's a very jolly song with a good tune. The only reservation I have about it is that it makes grinding the poor sound like fun, whereas as we know it's very hard work being a capitalist exploiter.