To Penshurst

The premise of Ben Jonson’s poem “To Penshurst” (1616) is deceptively simple: it appears to be a celebration of the ancestral estate Penshurst Place, which comprises the buildings, gardens, and forests belonging to one of his generation’s noblest figures, Sir Philip Sydney (1554-1586), a poet, courtier, and military hero who died heroically at the age of 28 while serving in the Netherlands during the Eighty Years War. Jonson himself had stayed at Penshurst, about 30 miles east of London, and enjoyed the hospitality of Sir Philip’s younger brother Robert. The poem then is a kind of elaborate thank you to the family as Jonson details the wealth of natural beauty in the home’s 11 acre spread as well as the boundless hospitality of the Sydney family. Indeed, it is considered one of the premier examples of country house poetry, a genre of British poetry that flourished briefly before the Industrial Revolution rendered such praise for the rich at best nostalgic and at worst ironic.

But the poem is more than one of those puff pieces that might appear in some coffee-table book that showcases the beautiful homes of the rich and famous. Jonson develops Penshurst as a socio-cultural metaphor. The estate, with its lush appointments, dated back to the 14th century, and for Jonson the estate and the hospitality of the Sydney family itself epitomized the elegance, culture, and sophistication of an England he regarded as disappearing as he wrote in the waning years of the grand Elizabethan era. That sense of nostalgia casts a quiet sadness about the poem.

Poet Biography

Ben Jonson was born June 11, 1572, in the heart of bustling Elizabethan London. His father, a humble Protestant parish priest, died just before Jonson was born. Although an exceptional student and a voracious reader, Jonson completed only the equivalent of a high school education before becoming an apprentice bricklayer working with his stepfather in 1589. Restless within such dead-end work, Jonson volunteered for military service overseas to fight in the Netherlands in the Eighty Years War.

By this time Jonson thought of himself as a playwright, although he had not written a line, and he was determined to return to London and find his place there within the bustling (and highly competitive) theater world. To provide some stability, he married in 1594, though within a few years the two maintained separate homes. Jonson’s first commercial stage success came four years later with a comedy titled Every Man in His Humor, which is about an obsessive and jealous husband, that featured a hugely popular young actor named Will Shakespeare. With his dashing sense of style and his signature shock of red hair, Jonson quickly became an integral element of the bohemian pub life of London’s theater district, and he was arrested multiple times and was briefly jailed for killing a man in a duel. Between 1605 and 1610, however, save for Shakespeare, Jonson was regarded as one of the most prolific and successful playwrights of the era; Elizabeth’s successor, James I, who ascended to the throne in 1603, and to a lesser extent his successor Charles I, both lavished the court’s praise (and its generosity) on Jonson. In this favored position, an unprecedented development in English court life, Jonson became Britain’s first de facto poet laureate. Jonson relished his celebrity and became one of the hub figures in London’s cultural life. It was during this time, in 1615, that Jonson, perpetually broke, enjoyed the hospitality (and largesse) of the Sydney family at Penshurst and first drafted what would become “To Penshurst.” His poetry, most of it published after his death in 1640, reflected his love of the prosody and metrics of antiquity.

After 1620, Jonson’s productivity remained high, but his influence began to wane. A series of catastrophic strokes left Jonson struggling to put ink to paper, though he was working on a new play right up to the night before he died, 8 August 1637. He was given the equivalent of a state funeral in London’s Westminster Abbey, where he was buried vertically in Poet’s Corner. Urban legend says the vertical burial was part of a negotiation, as Jonson could not cover the burial costs for a traditional horizontal burial. He was interred beneath a marble marker that, notoriously, spelled his last name wrong, a goof that was never fixed.

Poem Text

Thou art not, Penshurst, built to envious show, 

Of touch or marble; nor canst boast a row 

Of polished pillars, or a roof of gold;  

Thou hast no lantern, whereof tales are told,

Or stair, or courts; but stand’st an ancient pile, 

And, these grudged at, art reverenced the while. 

Thou joy’st in better marks, of soil, of air, 

Of wood, of water; therein thou art fair.  

Thou hast thy walks for health, as well as sport;

Thy mount, to which the dryads do resort, 

Where Pan and Bacchus their high feasts have made,

Beneath the broad beech and the chestnut shade; 

That taller tree, which of a nut was set 

At his great birth where all the Muses met. 

There in the writhèd bark are cut the names 

Of many a sylvan, taken with his flames;  

And thence the ruddy satyrs oft provoke  

The lighter fauns to reach thy Lady’s Oak. 

Thy copse too, named of Gamage, thou hast there,

That never fails to serve thee seasoned deer 

When thou wouldst feast or exercise thy friends. 

The lower land, that to the river bends, 

Thy sheep, thy bullocks, kine, and calves do feed;

The middle grounds thy mares and horses breed. 

Each bank doth yield thee conies; and the tops, 

Fertile of wood, Ashore and Sidney’s copse, 

To crown thy open table, doth provide 

The purpled pheasant with the speckled side;

The painted partridge lies in every field,  

And for thy mess is willing to be killed.  

And if the high-swollen Medway fail thy dish, 

Thou hast thy ponds, that pay thee tribute fish, 

Fat aged carps that run into thy net, 

And pikes, now weary their own kind to eat,

As loath the second draught or cast to stay, 

Officiously at first themselves betray; 

Bright eels that emulate them, and leap on land 

Before the fisher, or into his hand. 

Then hath thy orchard fruit, thy garden flowers, 

Fresh as the air, and new as are the hours. 

The early cherry, with the later plum, 

Fig, grape, and quince, each in his time doth come; 

The blushing apricot and woolly peach 

Hang on thy walls, that every child may reach. 

And though thy walls be of the country stone, 

They’re reared with no man’s ruin, no man’s groan; 

There’s none that dwell about them wish them down; 

But all come in, the farmer and the clown, 

And no one empty-handed, to salute  

Thy lord and lady, though they have no suit.

Some bring a capon, some a rural cake, 

Some nuts, some apples; some that think they make

The better cheeses bring them, or else send  

By their ripe daughters, whom they would commend 

This way to husbands, and whose baskets bear  

An emblem of themselves in plum or pear.  

But what can this (more than express their love) 

Add to thy free provisions, far above 

The need of such? whose liberal board doth flow 

With all that hospitality doth know;  

Where comes no guest but is allowed to eat,   

Without his fear, and of thy lord’s own meat;   

Where the same beer and bread, and selfsame wine,  

This is his lordship’s shall be also mine,   

And I not fain to sit (as some this day   

At great men’s tables), and yet dine away. 

Here no man tells my cups; nor, standing by, 

A waiter doth my gluttony envy, 

But gives me what I call, and lets me eat; 

He knows below he shall find plenty of meat.

The tables hoard not up for the next day; 

Nor, when I take my lodging, need I pray 

For fire, or lights, or livery; all is there, 

As if thou then wert mine, or I reigned here: 

There’s nothing I can wish, for which I stay. 

That found King James when, hunting late this way

With his brave son, the prince, they saw thy fires 

Shine bright on every hearth, as the desires 

Of thy Penates had been set on flame 

To entertain them; or the country came 

With all their zeal to warm their welcome here.

What (great I will not say, but) sudden cheer 

Didst thou then make ’em! and what praise was heaped 

On thy good lady then, who therein reaped 

The just reward of her high housewifery;  

To have her linen, plate, and all things nigh,  

When she was far; and not a room but dressed 

As if it had expected such a guest!  

These, Penshurst, are thy praise, and yet not all.

Thy lady’s noble, fruitful, chaste withal. 

His children thy great lord may call his own,  

A fortune in this age but rarely known.  

They are, and have been, taught religion; thence  

Their gentler spirits have sucked innocence.  

Each morn and even they are taught to pray, 

With the whole household, and may, every day, 

Read in their virtuous parents’ noble parts 

The mysteries of manners, arms, and arts.  

Now, Penshurst, they that will proportion thee 

With other edifices, when they see 

Those proud, ambitious heaps, and nothing else, 

May say their lords have built, but thy lord dwells.

Jonson, Ben. "To Penhurst." 1616. The Poetry Foundation.

Summary

As the poem opens, the poet addresses the estate itself; the manor is the “you.” First the poet wants to reassure Penshurst that it is no ordinary place. Other more recent estates all around Penshurst are, the poet sniffs, overly decorative and fancifully (and impractically) opulent with “polished pillars” and roofs “of gold” (Line 3), decorations that serve no real value save to promote the owners’ egos. Such touches are extravagances for extravagance’s sake.

Penshurst, however, manifests its richness not in marble or gold trimmings but rather in “the better marks, of soil, of air / Of wood, of water” (Lines 6, 7). Here is nature in abundance, and the poet wanders with delight along the estate’s paths that wind through trees so lofty and so ancient they surely date back, the poet muses fancifully, to the mythic times of antiquity. As the poet meanders along the edges of one of the estate’s lakes, he spies an extravagance of deer as well as fields of peacefully grazing sheep and cows. Horses spirit about the farthest reaches of the estate, happily careening about the green openness as they playfully breed.

Along the bank of the same lake, the poet spies an open stretch of woods, wherein thrive “the purpled pheasant” and the “painted partridge” (Lines 28, 29). Here the poet, getting caught up in the magic of the estate, argues these game birds “for [Penshurst’s] mess [are] willing to be killed” (Lines 30). So tonic is the estate’s magical environment that the wild birds and even the fish in the lake, the “fat aged carp” (Line 34), cannot wait to be slaughtered and eaten.

The poet then enumerates a similar sense of richness in the estate’s orchards—its early cherries, figs, grapes, quince, apricots, and the “woolly peach” (Line 43)—all hanging heavy on branches and curling vines. The vines that grow along the estate’s boundary stone walls encourage the poet to observe that, unlike other estates built by the new rich, whose boundary walls are steeped high enough to keep the unwanteds out, the walls here are such that a child can reach the top. The wall is welcoming: “There’s none that dwell about them wish them down” (Line 49).

Using the walls as a symbol of the estate’s welcome, the poet celebrates how the estate and its family welcomes visitors and how visitors happily bring gifts to honor the host and hostess—offerings of apples, nuts, cheeses, plums and pears. In turn the Sydneys happily share their own largesse, their “liberal board” (Line 59), with visitors. What is critical for the poet is that, unlike other manors where the family never shares with visitors the prime food and beverages, saving those delectables for the family itself, at Penshurst the visitors feast on exactly what the lord and lady eat and drink. The servings here seem limitless and no servants call out a visitor’s appetite. Visitors as well as the serving staff all know “they shall find plenty of meat” (Line 69). This hospitality, this liberality, the poet himself affirms as he is himself a visitor to Penshurst. Indeed, during his own stay he has come to feel as if the home were his. The poet enhances his argument, pointing out that no less a figure than King James himself and his son the prince visited Penshurst on impulse during a hunting trip and found a warm welcome despite giving the Sydneys no advance notice, “not a room but dressed / As if it had expected such a guest!” (Line 87).

At this point, the poet returns to addressing the estate directly. “These, Penshurst, are thy praise” (Line 88). He extols now the virtues of the residents themselves—the lord and lady and their adult children—their nobility of spirit, the depth of their education, and their embrace of religion that has gifted them all with gentleness, compassion, and humility. Their parents have indeed taught their offspring the “mysteries of manners, arms, and arts” (Line 98). In short, they provided their children the complete old school education.

In closing, the poet cautions Penshurst not to be perturbed by comparisons others may make to the gaudy estates all around, those “proud and ambitious heaps” (Line 109). They are empty and ostentatious monuments to egos—their owners, the nouveau rich of London’s rising middle class, seldom even visit these homes because they are too busy in the city making money. By contrast, Penshurst is a stately edifice, certainly, but one that serves as a real-time home for a loving, generous family.