just after Constable converted to Roman Catholicism
in 1590 or 1591. The poem beginning with a direct
address to the “Sweete Saynt,” Mary Magdalen, is one
of a number of sonnets in the sequence that are
addressed to the saint who, according to popular tradi-
tion, had lived an immoral life before turning to
Christ.
“To St Mary Magdalen” is an ENGLISH SONNET, con-
sisting of three quatrains and a rhyming COUPLET. The
fi rst quatrain asserts the speaker’s modesty: He con-
verses with St Mary directly and respectfully, suggest-
ing that she, better than he, can account for the
superiority of “heavenly love” over any other sort of
love. In the second quatrain, the speaker implies that
he sees himself as a sort of Mary Magdalen fi gure. It is
imagined that he will behave like a chaste woman: The
soft “s” sounds of the fi fth line convey the gentleness of
his newly meek disposition—“lyke a woman spowse
my sowle shalbee,” he states. Once base and earthy,
the speaker has redeemed himself, as Mary did, because
now he too is “enamored” with Christ when he was
previously motivated by “lust” and “synfull passions.”
In the third quatrain, the speaker looks forward to
death. It is anticipated that death will lift the mortal
burden of life’s “labors” and the liberation of “my
spryght”—his soul or spirit. The concluding couplet
appropriates language from erotic love poetry but uses
it in a profoundly religious manner. As devoted to God
as Mary Magdalen was to Jesus, the speaker’s spirit will
be “clasped in the armes of God” and forever wedded
in a “sweete conjunction.” As a recusant—a campaigner
for England’s reversion back to Catholicism—Consta-
ble was an outsider in 1590s’ England, one whose reli-
gion was denigrated and forbidden by law. But in this
poem the speaker can anticipate only eternal, heavenly
victory for all moral beings who follow the example of
saints such as Magdalen: The poem ends with a rous-
ing prediction of “everlasting joye.”
FURTHER READING
Grundy, Joan, ed. The Poems of Henry Constable. Liverpool,
U.K.: Liverpool University Press, 1960.
Salmon, F. “Mary Magdalen, Frederico Borremeo, and
Henry Constable’s Spirituall Sonnettes.” Recusant History 18
(1986–87): 227–236.
Wickes, G. “Henry Constable, Poet and Courtier, 1562–
1613.” Biographical Studies 2 (1953–54): 272–300.
Kevin de Ornellas“TO THEE PURE SPRITE” (“TO THE
ANGEL SPIRIT OF THE MOST EXCEL-
LENT SIR PHILIP SIDNEY”) MARY SIDNEY
HERBERT, COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE (1623) Upon
the death of her brother, SIR PHILIP SIDNEY, MARY SIDNEY
HERBERT decided to complete his unfi nished project, a
translation of the Bible’s Psalms, herself. She dedicates
the SIDNEAN PSALMS to his memory in the poem “To
Thee Pure Sprite,” a poem that also serves as an ELEGY
for her brother. The poem exhibits the tension inher-
ent in this moment, a tension between Herbert’s plea-
sure, pride, and excitement at completing the work
and her guilt in fi nishing the project without her
brother.
The poem is written as a direct address to Sidney.
Herbert’s writing, with interjections, questions, and par-
enthetical statements, displays an informal yet controlled
style, appropriate for a poem spoken to a sibling. For
example, in the lines “Yet here behold (oh, wert thou to
behold!) / This fi nished now” (ll. 22–23), Herbert inter-
rupts herself to address Sidney parenthetically. The line
reads as a sincere exclamation and expression of Her-
bert’s desire to have her brother present.
The poem expresses Sidney’s genius while understat-
ing Herbert’s own contributions. Herbert begins by stat-
ing that the subsequent poems are, “by double interest,”
truly his. Sidney wrote the initial poems, and Herbert
credits the later poems she wrote herself to Sidney as
well, for he was her inspiration. Throughout the collec-
tion, Herbert reinforces the idea that the poems belong
to both her brother and herself. In the fi rst STANZA, “So
dared my muse with thine itself combine” (l. 5), asserts
that Herbert attempted to marry her muse to her broth-
er’s. This line, suggesting a form of marriage between
the two siblings, is echoed in the end of the poem when
she writes, “If any mark of thy sweet sprite appear / Well
are they born” (ll. 86–87). In this sense, the poems are
the children of Herbert and Sidney.
In addition to making clear her debt to Sidney, Her-
bert also openly praises him, at times exalting her work
and at other times claiming her inadequacies in relation“TO THEE PURE SPRITE” 437