Although I studied poetry, and early English poetry, I have never before come across Barnabe Barnes; he was born in 1571 in Durham and was actually the son of the bishop of Durham. Such was the powerful feelings about poetry at the time, that Barnes was arrested and tried for the attempted murder of another poet, over a dispute about poetry… it seems ludicrous but maybe it’s true that instead of trying to stab, beat or drown his victim, Barnes offered him a poisoned lemon and then poisoned wine – the intended victim’s offence was to criticise not only his poems but also his dress sense.
Here is a sonnet by Barnes who died young at the age of thirty-eight in 1609:
This careful head, with divers thoughts distressed,
My fancy’s chronicler, my sorrow’s muse;
These watchful eyes, whose heedless aim I curse,
Love’s sentinels, and fountains of unrest;
This tongue still trembling, herald fit addressed
To my love’s grief (than any torment worse);
This heart, true fortress of my spotless love,
And rageous furnace of my long desire:
Of these, by nature, am I not possessed,
Though nature their first means in me did move.
But thou, dear sweet, with thy love’s holy fire,
My head grief’s anvil made, with cares oppressed;
Mine eyes, a spring; my tongue, a leaf, wind-shaken;
My heart, a wasteful wilderness forsaken.
Lois Elsden 