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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > East Sussex c.1806-20 > Hastings Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Verses (Inscriptions by Turner) circa 1809-11

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Verses (Inscriptions by Turner)’ circa 1809-11
Folio 66 Verso:
Verses (Inscriptions by Turner) circa 1809–11
D07698
Turner Bequest CXI 66a
Pencil on white wove paper, 110 x 88 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil (see main catalogue entry)
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Rosalind Mallord Turner’s reading of Turner’s inscription for the 1990 Tate exhibition is largely followed here:
World I have know the[e] long & now the hour
When I must part from thee is now at hand
I bore thee much goodwill & many a time
In thy fair promises repos’d more trust
Than wiser heads & colder hearts w’d risk
Some tokens of a life, not wholly passed
In Selfish strivings or ignoble sloth
Haply there shall be found when I am gone
What may dispose thy candour to discover
Some merit in my zeal & let my words
Out live the Maker who bequeaths them to thee
For well I know where our possessions End
Thy praise begins & few there be who weave
Wreaths for the Poet brow, till he is laid
Low in his narrow dwelling with the worm
This passage might belong to the longer poem on fancy and imagination drafted in this sketchbook, but seems different in tone. It is a valediction, wistful and resigned. James Hamilton attributes its theme of death or suicide to an overdose of stramonium (see folio 2 verso, D07597, for instructions on how to smoke this drug). Anthony Bailey however considers it a ‘well-organised chunk of blank verse’, too good to be Turner’s; ‘whom is he echoing ([George] Herbert? [William] Cowper?)’.

David Blayney Brown
May 2011

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Verses (Inscriptions by Turner) c.1809–11’, catalogue entry, May 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/verses-inscriptions-by-turner-r1131185, accessed 08 May 2024.