Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Wythin a garth under a red rosere,
Ane ald man, and decrepit, herd I syng;
Gay was the note, suete was the voce et clere:
It was grete joy to here of sik a thing.
‘And to my dome,’ he said, in his dytyng,
‘For to be yong I wald not, for my wis
Off all this warld to mak me lord et king;
The more of age the nerar hevynnis blis.

‘False is this warld and full of variance,
Besoucht with syn and other sytis mo;
Treuth is all tynt, gyle has the gouvernance,
Wrechitnes has wroht all welthis wele to wo;
Fredome is tynt, and flemyt the lordis fro,
And covatise is all the cause of this;
I am content that youthede is ago:
The more of age the nerar hevynnis blisse.

‘The state of youth I repute for na gude,
For in that state sik perilis now I see;
Bot full smal grace, the regeing of his blude
Can none gaynstand quhill that he agit be;
Syne of the thing that tofore joyit he
Nothing remaynis for to be callit his;
For quhy it were bot veray vanitee:
The more of age the nerar hevyniss blisse.

‘Suld no man traist this wrechit warld, for quhy
Of erdly joy ay sorrow is the end;
The state of it can noman certify,
This day a king, to morne na gude to spend.
Quhat have we here bot grace us to defend?
The quihilk god grant us for to mend oure mys,
That to his glore he may oure saulis send;
The more of age the nerar hevynnis blisse.’

Robert Henryson (1430? - 1506)
From The Penguin Book of Religious Verse, published 1963, price 3/6, edited by R.S Thomas. Thomas’ Introduction is brief and full, ‘roughly defining religion as embracing an experience of ultimate reality, and poetry as the imaginative presentation of such...’ ‘Poetry still has little hold over contemporary society,’ etc: he also says that the book is ‘not an anthology of Christian verse’. With great eclat he divides the collection into five sections, GOD, SELF, NOTHING, IT, ALL.