Fie, Foolish Earth

Fie, Foolish Earth
Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke 1554-1628

Fulke Greville was a courtier poet and a favorite of Queen Elizabeth who appointed him Baron Brooke. Among the other, and perhaps more significant poets of his day was Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Walter Raleigh.

Fie, foolish earth, think you the heaven wants glory
Because your shadows do yourself benight?
All’s dark unto the blind, let them be sorry;
The heavens in themselves are ever bright.

Paraphrase
For shame, foolish earth, do you think the heaven is lacking in glory because the shadows you cast forth darken you? All is dark to those who are so blind they cannot see, let them be sorry for their shadows, the heavens in themselves are undimmed and every bright.

Fie, fond desire, think you that love wants glory
Because your shadows do yourself benight?
The hopes and fears of lust may make men sorry,
But love still in herself finds her delight.

Paraphrase
For shame, base desire, do you think that love is lacking in glory because your own shadows darken you? The squalid hopes and fears of lust make men sorry, but true love finds her delight in herself.


Then earth stand fast, the sky that you benight
Will turn again and so restore your glory;
Desire, be steady, hope is your delight,
An orb wherein no creature can be sorry,
Love being placed above these middle regions
Where every passion wars itself with legions.

Paraphrase
Then stand fast earth, the sky you try to darken will turn again and then restore your glory; let your desire be steady for hope itself is your delight, an orb, a realm where no creature can be sorry.

Love is placed above these middle regions; here the darkened earth is in warfare with the legions of the enemy.

Commentary
The poem is a sonnet, abab baba babacc, roughly around ten beats to a line, give or take a little.

The first quatrain contrasts heaven and earth. The earth darkens itself . . . it still does, but the earth cannot cast shadows on the glory of the heaven. In the second verse base desires and the hopes and fears that spring from lust cannot sully the glory of pure love where true delight is to be found. In third section both the tawdry earth and base desire will be illumined by the glory of love and brought to a realm where joy will replace darkness and base desire.

Love itself dwells on a higher plain and its battle with the legions of darkness are here on this middle earth where we struggle with our own darkness and base desires, but the poet reminds us that love dwells on a higher level. There is in the heavens, and in love itself, a greater power than the shadows we cast forth, and the poet bids us be steadfast in hope, for, to borrow from an earlier poet but with a purer intention, omnia vincit amor, Love Conquers All.

There is a subtlety not noticed by Fulke Greville. While love in its glory has the power to illumine darkness there is a limitation to the power of love; those who dwell in darkness must be willing to be illumined, nothing removes the mixed blessing of freedom of will. If you will not be loved nothing will avail; but if love is your desire then glory enters in.

Love Requires An Opening
In Samuel Johnson’s translation of a poem from the Roman poet Martial, he writes,

Remember, words alone are vain;
Love – if you would be loved again.

Love requires not only an act of will, but action. Love is an action word, we are called to love in order to be loved, but one must keep in mind a basic principle, God initiates and man responds. The Gift of Love has already been given and all our loving is possible because He first loved us. When I say all our loving I do mean “all” our loving, not only the highest love that flows from God, but those loves with which we love each other, Eros, our Romantic Love; Phileos, brotherly love; humble Storgé, sweet affection, as well as Agapé that heavenly love incarnate in the Christ and through Him even now enfleshed in us.

In order to preserve that Romantic Love and all loves, love must always be kept in its proper order. Love flows from God, from the top down, not from the bottom up. When one loves God the most, then all ardent love is possible. In Monna Innominata, Christina Rossetti in a tribute to Elizabeth Barrett Browning pens these lines,

Yet while I love my God the most, I deem
That I can never love you overmuch;
I love Him more, so let me love you too;
Yea, as I apprehended it, love is such
I cannot love you if I love not Him,
I cannot love Him if I love not you.

Romantic Love finds is power and genius when it takes its rightful place as the handmaiden of Heavenly Love. It is when we love God the most that our love for our earthly beloved is empowered and deified by our true Lover, then we can with the poet John Keats sing as he does to his Fanny Browne.

Ah! dearest love, sweet home of all my fears,
And hopes, and joys, and panting miseries,--
To-night, if I may guess, thy beauty wears
A smile of such delight,
As brilliant and as bright,
As when with ravished, aching vassal eyes,
Lost in soft amaze,
I gaze, I gaze.