PREFACE
This book makes available , for the first time , transcriptions and translations of eighteen pattern poems composed between 1573 and 1618 by affiliates of Winchester College . The poets were pupils , teachers , and alumni ; today , their translators are also drawn from these communities . This volume thus represents the College ’ s important place in the millennia-long history of shaped verse .
I am deeply grateful to all the translators who devoted hours to deciphering and eloquently rendering these poems . Special thanks are due to my collaborators , William Poole and Stephen Anderson , whose awe-inspiring erudition and exacting attention to detail made this publication possible . Richard Foster and Marc Hussain have helped us immensely as we sought to transform our imagined book into a physical reality .
Full of arcane forms , unusual metres , and occasional schoolboy mistakes , these poems presented us with a challenge . Yet their imperfections and eccentricities are part of their charm . They conjure up the image of boys in black gowns , labouring with chilly fingers in the stony chambers of College to produce something innovative and beautiful . We no longer write pattern poems in Latin and Greek , but exciting , difficult intellectual endeavours are still going on at Winchester ( with marginally better heating ). So although these early modern works may seem foreign to us , we can nevertheless glimpse through them the extraordinary continuity of our scholarly tradition .
Jessica Glueck Winchester College 2020 v