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Thumbprints of Ephelia

Thumbprints of Ephelia (Lady Mary Villiers): The End of an Enigma in Restoration Attribution. Text, Image, Sound. With a first ‘Key’ to ‘Female Poems . . . by Ephelia’ (1679). by Maureen E. Mulvihill (Princeton Research Forum, Princeton, N.J.); Hosted by ReSoundings (Millersville University, Pa.; 2001, with annual updates).

Mary Villiers, Duchess of Richmond

Lady Mary Villiers, when as Mary, Lady Stuart, Duchess of Richmond & Lennox, with her dwarf, Anne Shepherd Gibson. By Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Court Painter for Charles I. London, circa 1636. Mulvihill reads this famous gloves-and-dwarf portrait of Duchess Mary as ingeniously encoded text for the Duchess’s sly method of manuscript transmission.

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Again rejoicing Nature sees
Her robe assume its vernal hues;
Her leafy locks wave in the breeze,
All freshly steeped in morning dews.

In vain to me the cowslips blaw,
In vain to me the violets spring;
In vain to me in glen or shaw,
The mavis and the lintwhite sing.

The merry ploughboy cheers his team,
Wi' joy the tentie seedsman stalks,
But life to me's a weary dream,
A dream of ane that never wauks.

The wanton coot the water skims,
Amang the reeds the ducklings cry,
The stately swan majestic swims,
And everything is blest but I.

The shepherd steeks his faulding slap,
And owre the moorland whistles shrill;
Wi' wild, unequal, wand'ring step
I meet him on the dewy hill.

And when the lark, 'tween light and dark,
Blithe waukens by the daisy's side,
And mounts and sings on flittering wings,
A woe-worn ghaist I hameward glide.

Come, Winter, with thine angry howl,
And raging bend the naked tree;
Thy gloom will soothe my cheerless soul,
When Nature all is sad like me!
Robert Burns [1759-1796]