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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Cheshire, Derbyshire, North Wales ... > Derbyshire Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Verses (Inscriptions by Turner) 1808

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Verses (Inscriptions by Turner)’ 1808
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 36 Recto:
Verses (Inscriptions by Turner) 1808
D07174
Turner Bequest CVI 36
Inscribed by Turner in ink (see main catalogue entry) on white wove paper, 185 x 108 mm
Inscribed ?by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘303’ bottom left, descending vertically, and ‘36’ bottom right, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CVI 36’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner’s verses read:
Sweet as the fragrant gale that blow[s]
By dewy morn oer opening rose
Sweet as the flower as calls the Bee
To revel deep in Luxury
Sweet as the Thyme on Sunny Bankl
That morns first ray delighted drank
Sweet as the honey drop that binds [?holds]
The wanton fly in trechrous [twines deleted] lines folds
Such sweets do[es] summer gaily [shed deleted] pour
Oer man and filed oer hill oer flower
Such sweets as these does Summer shed lead
Oer Sunny hill and flowering Glades mead
But when Autumn streaks the dawn
The timid drop dew hangs brightening on the thorn
Few the sweets that Autumn yields
The enfeebled Bee forsaken the fields
The drooping year the shortnen’d day
No glittering rays oer fallow play
Few gilding mornings clears the skies
But fog or mist oer uplands flies
This is another passage or variant passages from a poem about autumn, begun on folio 2 verso of the sketchbook (D07134); the line ‘Few the sweets that Autumn yields’ is reprised from what had appeared to be the opening stanza. See also folio 35 verso (D07173). A further version is in the Greenwich sketchbook (Tate D06725; Turner Bequest CII 3). The text given here is based on the reading made by Rosalind Mallord Turner for the 1990 Tate exhibition.

David Blayney Brown
July 2010

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Verses (Inscriptions by Turner) 1808 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 2010, 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-r1129600, accessed 18 September 2024.