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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Perspective lectures c.1809-28 > Perspective Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inscription by Turner: Draft of Poetry c.1809

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Inscription by Turner: Draft of Poetry’ c.1809
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 14 Recto:
Inscription by Turner: Draft of Poetry circa 1809
D07379
Turner Bequest CVIII 14
Pen and ink on white wove paper, 115 x 88 mm
Inscribed by Turner in ink (see main catalogue entry)
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘14’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CVIII – 14’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Almost the whole page is taken up with lines of poetry:
Nor urge my hand to catch a fly
So careless so indifferent am I
Whatever passes pass it may
No moment urge the rising lay
The wind it is too high too scant
Tis [Lindsay: Fro] East or North not what I want
The sails they give me so much trouble
And what is pleasure [‘sailing’ inserted above] but a bubble
When set I wish they were unfurld
And fain would give een all a World
A World of indifference I think
Nature dame [Lindsay: denies] Nature hold each link
In the great chain that is a Zone
Where cause and its effect are one1
This is the last passage of a poem (‘O apathy unfriendly power’) which runs over five pages from folio 8 recto (D07368); the previous section is on folio 13 recto (D07378). For a concordance of the extensive passages of poetry in this book, see the sketchbook Introduction.
John Gage has compared the view of pleasure as a bubble with similar lines about ‘the bubble Pleasure | which Bursts in his Grasp or [?flies]’, in the earlier Salisbury sketchbook (Tate D40772; Turner Bequest XLIX, inside front cover), as a characteristic Turnerian image of ‘fallacious hope’.2

Matthew Imms
June 2008

1
See Wilton and Turner 1990, p.163 (transcription, followed here with slight variations); previously transcribed with slight variations in Lindsay 1966, p.124.
2
John Gage, Colour in Turner: Poetry and Truth, London 1969, pp.186, 267 note 205.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Inscription by Turner: Draft of Poetry c.1809 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 2008, 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-inscription-by-turner-draft-of-poetry-r1136574, accessed 19 April 2024.