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A choice of popular EARLY MODERN VERSE
made by VICTORIA MOUL
with an introduction and notes
How should we react to the vagaries of love and desire; the allure of power or fame and the uncertainty of fortune; the experience of war and the inevitability of death?
In early modern England it was taken for granted that a good poem is both beautiful and useful: that it teaches or expresses something that it is helpful to remember, as one tries to conduct a decent life. This pamphlet presents a selection of poems from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which are, in most cases, not well known today. They have been chosen to reflect the kinds of verse that were most popular with readers at the time, but also for their beauty and utility.
Poems Beautiful & Useful features twenty poets, from Mary Sidney Herbert and Walter Raleigh to Morgan Llwyd O Wynedd and Payne Fisher, and includes poems unavailable in any other modern edition.
Victoria Moul is a British literary critic, scholar, poet and translator living in Paris.
—
Dazzled thus with height of place,
Whilst our hopes our wits beguile,
No man marks the narrow space
‘Twixt a prison and a smile.
—
Publication: 09 March 2026
ISBN: 978-1-9-9195507-0-1
A choice of popular EARLY MODERN VERSE
made by VICTORIA MOUL
with an introduction and notes
How should we react to the vagaries of love and desire; the allure of power or fame and the uncertainty of fortune; the experience of war and the inevitability of death?
In early modern England it was taken for granted that a good poem is both beautiful and useful: that it teaches or expresses something that it is helpful to remember, as one tries to conduct a decent life. This pamphlet presents a selection of poems from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which are, in most cases, not well known today. They have been chosen to reflect the kinds of verse that were most popular with readers at the time, but also for their beauty and utility.
Poems Beautiful & Useful features twenty poets, from Mary Sidney Herbert and Walter Raleigh to Morgan Llwyd O Wynedd and Payne Fisher, and includes poems unavailable in any other modern edition.
Victoria Moul is a British literary critic, scholar, poet and translator living in Paris.
—
Dazzled thus with height of place,
Whilst our hopes our wits beguile,
No man marks the narrow space
‘Twixt a prison and a smile.
—
Publication: 09 March 2026
ISBN: 978-1-9-9195507-0-1