Of the mother that eat her childe at the seige of Ierusalem. +The source is an anonymous Italian strambotto, ascribed (doubtfully) to Leone Ebreo, ‘Mentre nel duro petto e dispietato/l’ira, la fame et il furor combatte,/… farò del corpo al corpo sepoltura’, reprinted by Muir and Thomson , p. 319. Another copy in L: Egerton 2711, fol. 54v. Author: Sir Thomas Wyatt. Structure: 8: abababcc10
I N doubtfull breast whiles motherly pity +According to Josephus, Mary, daughter of Eleazer, killed her son and ate him during the siege of Jerusalem, Jewish War , VI.ii.4, ll. 201-13. With furious famine standeth at debateat variance , The mother sayth: O chyld vnhappy Returne thy bloud where thou hadst milke of late (5) Yeld me those limmes that I made vnto thee, And enter there where thou were generategenerated, created . For one ofof one body against all nature, To an other must I make sepulturesepulchre, tomb .
Of the meanepoor and sure estate writen to Iohn Poins. +Story of the town mouse and the country mouse can be found in Horace, Satire II: ‘Cervius haec inter vicinus garret anilis/ex re fabellas… me silva cavusque/tutus ab insidiis tenui solabitur ervo’ (vi.77-117), ‘Now, and then our neighbour Cervius rattles off old wives tales that fit the case… my wood and hole, secure from alarms, will solace me with homely vetch’, and Robert Henryson, ‘Tail of the Uponlondis Mous and the Burges Mous’, The morall fabillis of Esope the Phrygian (1570), sig. A4v-B4v. For other poems on the ‘mean’ as in poor estate, see also: ‘Of the mean and sure estate’ *; ‘The mean estate is best’ *; ‘The poor estate to be holden for best’ *; ‘They of the mean estate are happiest’ *). For poems on the ‘mean’ as in middle estate, see: ‘Praise of mean’ *; ‘The mean estate is to be [accompted] the best’ *; ‘Of the golden mean’ *; ‘The answere’, l. 5: ‘No … meane’ *; ‘Praise of measure’. * For John Poins, see glossary . Other copies in: L: Egerton 2711, fol. 50v-2v; L: Add. 17492, fol. 87; ARUND: Harrington, Temp. Eliz., c. 1550-92, fols. 100-1v. Author: Sir Thomas Wyatt. Structure: 112: terza
M Y mothers maides when they do sowe and spinne: They sing a song made of the feldishe mousefieldmouse, or country mouse : That forbicausefor because her liuelodlivelihood was but thinne, Would nedes go sesee her townish sisters house, (5) She thought, her selfe endured totoo greuousgrievous, sev
ere paine, The stormy blastes her caue so sore dyd sowsesore did souse, did drench with great distress : That when the furrowes swimmed with the raine: She must lie colde, and wet in sory plight. And worse then that, bare meatscarce food there did remaine (10) To comfort her, when she her house had dightput in order : Sometime a barly corne: sometime a beane: For which she laboured hard both day and night, In haruest time, while she might go and gleane. And when her store was stroyed withdestroyed by the floode: (15) Then weleawaywellaway, alas for she vndone was cleanewas completely ruined . Then was she fainepleased to take in stedeinstead of fode, Slepe if she might, her honger to begiledistract, pass insensibly . My sister (quodquoth, said she) hath a liuing good: And hence from me she dwelleth not a mile. (20) In colde and storme, she lieth warme and dry, In bed of downe: the durt doth not defile Her tender fote, she labours not as I,