2 . Sword ( Richard Willes ), p . 20 This poem , written in Paris on New Year ’ s Day , 1573 (?), is addressed by Willes to ‘ his Maecenas ’, possibly Sir Francis Walsingham , British Ambassador to France ( cf . Poem 5 ). It takes the shape of a sword , which , with St . Paul ( cf . Ephesians , 6.17 ) Willes designates ‘ The Sword of the Spirit ’. On either side of the blade he writes ‘ AMONG THE DEAD ’, a reference , if the proposed dating is correct , to the St . Bartholomew ’ s Day Massacre of the previous year , coupling this with a reference to Psalm 87 . Willes means Psalm 87 in the Septuagint or Vulgate numbering ; in the Hebrew or Masoretic numbering this is Ps . 88 , much of which is the lament of one who is ‘ counted as one of them that go down into the pit ’ ( BCP ad loc .).
The elegiac couplet which forms the blade can be read , with slightly different meanings , starting at either the beginning or the end ( see below and translation ). The cross-piece is a reciprocal verse , i . e . a line which can be read and scanned , without any change of meaning , either from the beginning or from the end , as can the line of Virgil ( Aen . 1.8 ) here quoted . The hilt of the sword consists of what Willes calls ‘ an iambic sesquicarmen ’, i . e . one and a half iambic trimeters .
Willes ’ s own scholium reads as follows :
Emblema hoc de meo addidi , nimirum illi assumendum esse gladium spiritus , quod est verbum Dei , quisquis a principum ira , a populi furore , atque impetu securus esse , caeteris cadentibus , volet . Versus in acie gladii duo vicissim retro commeant , qua de re postea . In obice transuerso carmen sibi ipsi reciprocum est , quale Maronis illud ,
Musa mihi causas memora quo numine laeso . Aen . 1 . Sesquicarmen Iambicum Capuli vice posui . Itaque primo sic legas :
Deinde ,
Non mihi diuitiae , non Serum vellera , non sunt Balsama , non pallae sunt mihi purpureae .
Purpureae mihi sunt pallae ? Non . Balsama sunt ? Non . Vellera Serum ? Non . Diuitiae mihi ? Non .
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