"Why should I drag along this life I hate, / Without one thought to mitigate the weight? / Whence this mysterious bearing to exist, / When every joy is lost, and every hope dismissed? / In chains and darkness wherefore should I stay, / And mourn in prison, while I keep the key?"
— Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley [née Lady Mary Pierrepont] (1689-1762)
Work Title
Date
w. 1736, 1749
Metaphor
"Why should I drag along this life I hate, / Without one thought to mitigate the weight? / Whence this mysterious bearing to exist, / When every joy is lost, and every hope dismissed? / In chains and darkness wherefore should I stay, / And mourn in prison, while I keep the key?"
Metaphor in Context
Yet one short moment would at once explain
What all philosophy has sought in vain,
Would clear all doubt and terminate all pain.
Why then not hasten that decisive hour,
Still in my view, and ever in my power?
Why should I drag along this life I hate,
Without one thought to mitigate the weight?
Whence this mysterious bearing to exist,
When every joy is lost, and every hope dismissed?
In chains and darkness wherefore should I stay,
And mourn in prison, while I keep the key?
(ll. 17-27, p. 69 in Lonsdale edition)
What all philosophy has sought in vain,
Would clear all doubt and terminate all pain.
Why then not hasten that decisive hour,
Still in my view, and ever in my power?
Why should I drag along this life I hate,
Without one thought to mitigate the weight?
Whence this mysterious bearing to exist,
When every joy is lost, and every hope dismissed?
In chains and darkness wherefore should I stay,
And mourn in prison, while I keep the key?
(ll. 17-27, p. 69 in Lonsdale edition)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
Written in 1736. See Isobel Grundy, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (OUP, 2001), p. 364.
Text from Roger Lonsdale's Eighteenth Century Women Poets (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).
I find two eighteenth-century printings: "Verse on Self-Murder, address'd to ---- by a Lady," in The Gentleman's and London Magazine (June 1749), p. 306. Also published as "Suicide" in The County Magazine (May 1786), No. V, vol. i, p. 71. Lonsdale confirms the first in his notes on the poem.
Text from Roger Lonsdale's Eighteenth Century Women Poets (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).
I find two eighteenth-century printings: "Verse on Self-Murder, address'd to ---- by a Lady," in The Gentleman's and London Magazine (June 1749), p. 306. Also published as "Suicide" in The County Magazine (May 1786), No. V, vol. i, p. 71. Lonsdale confirms the first in his notes on the poem.
Date of Entry
09/14/2009
Date of Review
11/18/2004
