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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > West Country 1811 > Devonshire Coast, No.1 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inscription by Turner: Draft of Poetry 1811

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Inscription by Turner: Draft of Poetry’ 1811
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 157 Verso:
Inscription by Turner: Draft of Poetry 1811
D08657
Turner Bequest CXXIII 154a
Inscribed by Turner in ink (see main catalogue entry) on white wove printing paper, 75 x 117 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The whole page is taken up with the following lines of verse:
Can man [?unheedfull] see the coming storm
Roll gathering on and to himself disarm
Of fear behold the meek heifer and the savage bull
Seek shelter and no longer rang [i.e. ‘range’] and cull
The various blossoms of the culture [?field]
and think that he more power shall not yield
His life beneath the forked blaze
That the next instant may eraze
His boasted prowess courage, reason, all
Prostrated lifeless [?beamless]
To madness <rushing> turned or [?lying] lifless [i.e. ‘lifeless’] fall
<[?Appal’d]> the
Till passing onward quick the scattered robes
All their parting show the purple bow
Right Eastward till the near <[?appr]>[...] decline
Of the all the chearing light that glorious shines
On skies [?o’er spread] clouds empurpled flushed in streaks1
Interspersed with drawings and the printed pages of Coltman’s British Itinerary, sixty-nine pages of this sketchbook are given over wholly or partly to these verses which Turner intended as a commentary for publication with the Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England which he sketched on the 1811 West Country tour (see the introduction to the sketchbook). The first lines are on folio 18 verso (D08396), and the last on folio 207 verso (D08736; CXXIII 204a).
The previous passage, on folio 155 recto (D08652; CXXIII 152), is part of a long sequence describing the rocky coast and rough seas along the Cornish coast. Here Turner considers humanity at the mercy of natural forces including an image of death by lightning, which he had already described on folio 133 verso (D08616; CXXIII 130a), before the storm clouds clear. Wilton and Turner give ‘?igniting’ rather than ‘lying’ in line eleven. In the next lines, on folio 159 verso (D08661; CXXIII 156a), peace and harmony return to nature, and Newton Poppleford, near Exeter, is the first specific place mentioned for some time, as Turner’s attention shifts back to South Devon.

Matthew Imms
June 2011

1
See Wilton and Turner 1990, p.174 (transcription, followed here with slight variations).

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Inscription by Turner: Draft of Poetry 1811 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 2011, 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-r1137135, accessed 09 June 2025.