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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Work for Earls Egremont and Lonsdale ... > Lowther Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Verses (Inscriptions by Turner) 1809

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Verses (Inscriptions by Turner)’ 1809
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 17 Recto:
Verses (Inscriptions by Turner) 1809
D07880
Turner Bequest CXIII 17
Inscribed by Turner in ink (see main catalogue entry) on white wove paper, 114 x 83 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘17’ top right, running vertically
Stamped in black ‘CXIII 17’ top right, running vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
These verses were first transcribed by Jack Lindsay, and then by Rosalind Mallord Turner, whose reading is followed here:
From the wild [peat deleted, gorse inserted] on rushy moor
Whose humid ether holds her store
Course brackens high and blooming ling
From which the Moorcock plies his wing
Exalting calls his callow brood & race
And bids them call the wilds to trace
Oer bushy beacon soaring sails
The mountain stone with rapid gales
Beats, hard and swallows up the wind
That twilight imagining now dimmed
Gives every pool a fresh supply
That mantled with the blackest dye
Beneath whose dark ungental breast
The treacherous peat moss lake at rest
So gay so green so soft a bed
But who to them like deny to tread
This passage belongs to a longer poem about a shooting accident, for which see Introduction to the sketchbook and note to folio 13 verso (D07873). The ‘moorcock’ is a black grouse.
Verso:
Blank

David Blayney Brown
July 2009

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Verses (Inscriptions by Turner) 1809 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 2009, 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-r1135835, accessed 25 April 2024.