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 1813 > Plymouth, Hamoaze Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inscription by Turner: A Draft of Poetry 1813

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Inscription by Turner: A Draft of Poetry’ 1813
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 277 Verso:
Inscription by Turner: A Draft of Poetry 1813
D09479
Turner Bequest CXXXI 188a
Pencil on white wove paper, 157 x 95 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil (see main catalogue entry)
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The whole page, inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, is taken up with the following lines of verse:
Bind not the Poppy in thy Golden Hair
Autumn kind giver of the full eard sheaf
Those notes have often echo’d to thy care
Check not their sweetness with thy fallg leaf
Winter thy sharp cold winds bespeak decay
Thy snow fraught robe with Perls still entwine
Thy sisters will thy generous care repay
[?Bending] with the round Thomson’s hal[...]d shrine
Inspiring Spring with renovating fire
Shall pleasing bind those reeds Alxis [i.e. ‘Alexis’] playd
And breathing balmy kiss to the lyre
Give one soft note to lost Alxis shade
Oer Thomson tomb Morn dewy dew drop beams
True friendship tribute shed for Popes lost fane
Sunk is his House But worth and Verse yet gleams
Thy smile nor fear capricious fashions rign
[first half of line blank] trace Obliv[...] shade
[?whose generous] Care bids Thoms’ Harp arise
from P [blank] surveyd1
The poem, concerning the poet James Thomson, continues from folio 278 recto opposite (D09480; Turner Bequest CXXXI 189), under which its subject is discussed.

Matthew Imms
April 2014

1
See Wilton and Turner 1990, p.178 (transcription, followed here with slight variations); see also p.129.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Inscription by Turner: A Draft of Poetry 1813 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-inscription-by-turner-a-draft-of-poetry-r1148209, accessed 26 April 2024.