Complaint Poetry
by Elizabeth Kolkovich
“A Solitary Complaint” opens with a question about earthly pain that it never answers directly. Instead, it concludes by looking to God. Other poets in the period used complaint poetry to lament unrelenting sorrow or to pivot from earthly concerns to the promise of heavenly reward. The following three examples parallel aspects of Pulter’s poem.
George Herbert, The Collar
- I struck the board, and cried, “No more;
- I will abroad!
- What? shall I ever sigh and pine?
- My lines and life are free, free as the road,
- Loose as the wind, as large as store.
- Shall I be still in suit?
- Have I no harvest but a thorn
- To let me blood, and not restore
- What I have lost with cordial fruit?
- Sure there was wine
- Before my sighs did dry it; there was corn
- Before my tears did drown it.
- Is the year only lost to me?
- Have I no bays to crown it,
- No flowers, no garlands gay? All blasted?
- All wasted?
- Not so, my heart; but there is fruit,
- And thou hast hands.
- Recover all thy sigh-blown age
- On double pleasures: leave thy cold dispute
- Of what is fit and not. Forsake thy cage,
- Thy rope of sands,
- Which petty thoughts have made, and made to thee
- Good cable, to enforce and draw,
- And be thy law,
- While thou didst wink and wouldst not see.
- Away! take heed;
- I will abroad.
- Call in thy death’s-head there; tie up thy fears;
- He that forbears
- To suit and serve his need
- Deserves his load.”
- But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild
- At every word,
- Methought I heard one calling, Child!
- And I replied My Lord.
Source: PoetryFoundation.org
George Herbert, Bitter-sweet
- Ah my dear angry Lord,
- Since thou dost love, yet strike;
- Cast down, yet help afford;
- I will do the like.
- I will complain, yet praise;
- I will bewail, approve:
- And all my sour-sweet days
- I will lament, and love.
Source: The Temple (London, 1633), sig. G11r-G11v, with spelling modernized.
Mary Wroth, excerpt from Urania, Book 1
- Unseen, unknown, I here alone complain
- To Rocks, to Hills, to Meadows, and to Springs,
- Which can no help return to ease my pain,
- But back my sorrows the sad Echo brings.
- Thus still increasing are my woes to me,
- Doubly resounded by that moanful voice,
- Which seems to second me in misery,
- And answer gives like friend of mine own choice.
- Thus only she doth my companion prove,
- The others silently do offer ease:
- But those that grieve, a grieving note do love;
- Pleasures to dying eyes bring but disease:
- And such am I, who daily ending live,
- Wailing a state which can no comfort give.
Source: The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania (London, 1612), sig. B1v, with spelling modernized.