Kingdomes are but Cares (attributed)
Kingdomes are but Cares (attributed)
Original Text
Sir John Harington, "Sir John Harington to Prince Henry, 1609," Nugæ Antiquæ: Being a Miscellaneous Collection of Original Papers, in Prose and Verse; Written during the Reigns of Henry VIII. Edward VI. Queen Mary, Elizabeth, and King James, selected by Henry Harington, edited by Thomas Park (London: Vernor and Hood, and Cuthell and Martin, 1804): I, 386.DA 320 H37 Robarts Library
3Ryches are redy snares,
4And hastene to decaie.
6Wich vyce doth styll provoke;
8Powre, a smouldryng smoke.
9Who meenethe to remoofe the rocke
10Owte of the slymie mudde,
11Shall myre hymselfe, and hardlie scape
12The swellynge of the flodde.
Notes
1] The poem is written in 16th-century English, too late to be Henry VI's, but the poem may translate a Latin original by Henry. At any rate, the poem remains famous today, being in the 16th edition of Bartlett's Quotations (1992).
Sir John Harington writes to the son of James I: "My ancestor Sir James Haryington did once take prisoner, with his party, this poor Prince; for which the House of York did graunt him a parcel of lands in the northern counties, and which he was fool enough to lose again, after the battle of Bosworth ..." (I, 385); and "The verse I did mean to presente your Highnesse wyth is as doth now followe, and well suteth the temper and condition of him who made it" (I, 386). Back to Line
Sir John Harington writes to the son of James I: "My ancestor Sir James Haryington did once take prisoner, with his party, this poor Prince; for which the House of York did graunt him a parcel of lands in the northern counties, and which he was fool enough to lose again, after the battle of Bosworth ..." (I, 385); and "The verse I did mean to presente your Highnesse wyth is as doth now followe, and well suteth the temper and condition of him who made it" (I, 386). Back to Line
2] staie: stay, support. The Oxford English Dictionary reports this sense ("stay," sb. 2) only in the 16th century. Back to Line
5] pryvie pricke: secretly piercing spur (possibly quibbling on the penis and sexual pleasure, though this sense appears to be a 16th-century one). Back to Line
7] unprompt: a rare word, no in the Oxford English Dictionary, perhaps meaning "slow to come." Back to Line
Publication Start Year
1779
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
RPO 2000.
Rhyme