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

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Verses (Inscriptions by Turner)’ 1809
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 14 Verso:
Verses (Inscriptions by Turner) 1809
D07875
Turner Bequest CXIII 14a
Inscribed by Turner in pencil (see main catalogue entry) on white wove paper, 114 x 83 mm
 
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 largely followed here:
Hence far from me Sporting field
To all those joys, if joy they yield
Where chance and accident abound
And blood attend the thundering sound
The gun too oft it owner wound
As brings the winged quarry to the ground
Away there all sport of the fields
Its pleasure and its pain I joyfull yield
No more my finger give the ignited flash
But teach indifference to the fatal crash
That fraught with one impending fate
Else death and its awful forms await
Or worse than Death enrobd of Vision gem
No longer view thy course with brag men
Shut out from my joy in nature’s day
A sighing blank without a pearly ray
Where recollection must more keenly prove
The interlectual mirror given as above
See Introduction to the sketchbook and note to folio 13 verso (D07873) for these verses about a shooting accident and their possible motivation.

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-r1135830, accessed 26 April 2024.