J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Thames sketchbooks c.1804-14 > River Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Verses (Inscriptions by Turner) c.1807-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Verses (Inscriptions by Turner)’ c.1807-8
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 70 Verso:
Verses (Inscriptions by Turner) circa 1807–8
D06056
Turner Bequest XCVI 68a
Inscribed by Turner in pencil and ink (see main catalogue entry) on white laid paper, 163 x 92 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
See note to folio 68 of the sketchbook (D06053) for background to these verses. Written first in pencil, they are overwritten in ink from line eleven. Rosalind Mallord Turner’s reading published in the 1990 Tate catalogue is adopted here, with significant variations noted in square brackets:
or he who touched the rankling smart
of sequestered [Turner: Cloisterd] love but not requited heart
Sigh for her husband her secret woes
The dread curse from when[ce] woe arose
With or fair Lodonas ...[Turner: ?brimming] stream
so near proud Windsor ray or beam
And peaceful Binfield naked shade
?parted comrade he playd
In rustic Verse his early time beguiled
As [Turner: &] often natures sweetest flowers are wild
With conscious power the manly Nile dos break
And gathring strength from high Gambia’s Lake
Impelled o’er rocks decends thundering wide
Onrushing [Turner: bursting] wave amid concussion ruins ride
So Troys dread Son & battle hostile power
burst thro the bulwark of the Grecian Towers
In Slaughtered heaps his wrathful course controul
Man oer slain in dreadful tumult roll
Patroculas corse defiled [Turner: defield] with dust & gore
The struggling Greeks drags from shore to shore
Pale Hectors in triumph trails the [?agamemnon] plain around
His Troy to deep foundation feels his fatal wound
Turner refers to the boyhood of the poet Alexander Pope at Binfield in Windsor Forest. Binfield is also mentioned on folio 76 verso of this sketchbook (D06068). The sudden jump to events in the Trojan Wars can be explained by the fact that Pope’s translation of Homer’s Iliad (1715–20) earned him the funds to move to his villa at Twickenham, demolition of which in 1807 prompted Turner’s poem.

David Blayney Brown
October 2006

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Verses (Inscriptions by Turner) c.1807–8 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, October 2006, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-verses-inscriptions-by-turner-r1130234, accessed 24 April 2024.