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Love Songs for Malcolm
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I.
Quickly you approach, King Malcolm,
Firm and steady is your tread,
Predetermined on defeating
Faint reluctance in the greeting
Made by one you mean to wed.
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English words surprise me, Malcolm,
Asking questions delicate;
Comfort for us you’ve promoted,
Courtly words to me devoted,
Pledging love predestinate.
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Sweetly you commanded, Malcolm,
Birnam Wood to Dunsinane;
Sweet, I see your bold eyes lowered
Flash at me to not be froward;
Sweetly over me you reign.
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Fondly I adore you, Malcolm,
Acquiesce in all you say;
Kiss my hand, embrace more nearly,
Let us marry cavalierly
Wild in your heart-witching way.
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froward: unruly
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II..
O leaden sky and pearly heaven,
__Grand law above harsh land,
Your voice is thunder writ in lightning,
__Great scepter grasped in hand;
High palisade of sacred order
__Beyond what storms have spanned,
Your soaring like the golden eagle
__I fain would understand.
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O canopy of calm and tempest,
__Your realm you overlie
With peace and fortitude and justice,
__Morn’s morning you supply;
Night’s opalescent merry dancers
__New joys exemplify,
And sky-aspiring near your zenith
__Your grace I multiply.
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My arms attempt to clasp you tameless,
__O lion vehement,
But thirled by loyalty’s affection,
__Come lapse in large content;
Meet me, my meteoric monarch
__Perfumed in sylvan scent:
The crowning bounty we’re afforded
__Is time together spent.
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merry dancers: the aurora borealis
thirled: bound, but also pierced or thrilled
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Poet’s note: Margaret, daughter of the mysteriously deceased Prince Edward of England, arrived in Scotland as a refugee in 1068, along with mother, sister, and brother. The family, escaping the power of William the Conqueror in England, was met by Malcolm Canmore, King of Scotland, victor over the murderous Macbeth. Malcolm, who had been an exile in England during Macbeth’s reign in Scotland, enjoyed an exceptionally long and stable reign from 1058 to 1093, when Queen Margaret also died. The historic meeting of the two is portrayed by Scottish painter William Brassey Hole.
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Margaret Coats lives in California. She holds a Ph.D. in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard University. She has retired from a career of teaching literature, languages, and writing that included considerable work in homeschooling for her own family and others.
‘The crowning bounty we’re afforded / Is time together spent.’
That final two lines is absolutely marvelous, Margaret, a worthy ending to an emotion-packed and sincere love poem.
And that picture you mention, which has been included before your poem, carries so much emotional charge.
Thanks for the read
Paul, thank you for confirming my judgment about the “absolutely marvelous” end of the poem. I wondered if it might be too simple and sentimental, but it is true for any lovers. And it certainly fits the historical situation, with a busy king and queen who accomplished a great deal, and were usually surrounded by others hoping for their attention.
These are bewitching love songs replete with historical references; compelling, creative thoughts of love and affection; and reverence for Malcolm, Scotland’s King and Queen Margaret’s paramour and husband. I have two connections in my lineage back to those times. On my mother’s side, I am descended from the Sister of William the Conqueror (Adelaide) through the Warburton line (one great grandmother of mine was a Warburton) and from the Coburn/Colburn clan (via a second great grandmother) of Scotland. With your past rooted in China, I should also tell you that my great uncle, Reno Warburton Backus was a medical missionary to China who had to escape the first time from the Japanese and after returning post-WWII, from the advancing communists. I understand his last position was head of the Presbyterian hospital in Beijing. I pay homage to your superior talents in writing such great poetry. I sense more than a passing interest in Queen Margaret! You certainly are one of our queens of classical poetry.
Thank you so much, Roy, for the royal compliment on the songs. Margaret of Scotland is an epic figure with a great love story. I hope to write more about her. Her biography written by a friend shows how Malcolm was smitten with her, and says she returned his love, but never gives any details about her feelings. These songs are my imagination of that affection and reverence for a manly king probably 15 years older than herself.
Margaret as a saint is my heavenly patroness. I was named after my mother and her mother. My grandmother, long before genealogy was fashionable, did the work to trace our descent from Clan Campbell, headed by the Duke of Argyll in the Western Isles. Some relatives are also associated with the city of Aberdeen in northeast Scotland. I’ve visited both areas. You too have a fascinating lineage with good stories about individuals!
Margaret, these are truly elegant and courtly. Were you by any chance thinking of dances, or of poetry related to dance, in composing this beautiful pair?
Thanks, Julian. Dance was not in my mind, but I was looking at Scottish songs with beautifully regular meter, and decided to do the same. I’m very pleased that such a musician as you enjoys them.
I love the first simple love lyric, which calls to mind scenes from the Song of Songs and Henry Vth. And hopefully it’s not just me but I sense an underlying eroticism in the second poem(?) which makes the two in a way very different yet both beautiful.
You’re right, Jeremiah. The first song relates to the first meeting of Margaret and Malcolm, while the second imagines them married for a while. They most likely enjoyed a healthy eroticism, with six sons and two daughters who lived to adulthood. The second poem uses the image of the sky for the king, and that naturally suggests rain as fertilizing power. You’re a good reader!
P.S. – I didn’t know Malcolm and Macbeth were historical figures. Thanks for enlightening me!
Another historical note: Malcolm and Margaret’s daughter Matilda married a son of William the Conqueror. That’s how the Anglo-Saxon royal blood passed on to all of England’s later monarchs.
Princess Margaret is surprised that King Malcolm addresses her in Anglo-Saxon, but no doubt he picked up the tongue during his exile in England. Margaret herself probably spoke both Anglo-Saxon and Hungarian (from her childhood on the continent), but it’s tempting to think that both he and she (after marriage) conversed in a Northumbrian dialect that later became Lallans Scots.
Maybe so! One intriguing linguistic aspect is that Malcolm and Margaret introduced strikingly new naming customs. The first four sons had English names from the Wessex family, then came Alexander (turned Scots as Alasdair), probably after Pope Alexander II. With Alec and Sandy as nicknames, it became one of the most popular Scottish names ever, and then there was the youngest son David, introducing Biblical names. Daughter Edith adopted the more Norman name of Matilda when marrying into the Conqueror’s line. Thanks for the thought, Joe.
The theme seems to spring from the word “thirled.” A fresh use of an interesting old word. The lines, “Let us marry cavalierly/Wild in your heart-witching way,” breathe life in a thousand-year-old story.
Thank you, Geoffrey. I chose that word carefully for its multiple meanings. Used it before in another poem suggesting the pain of desire, because the principal meaning in English is “pierced.” But looking it up anew, I found that it is much more common in Scots, where it is a legal term describing an obligation in honor (for example, a tenant must pay rent, but is also thirled with maintenance of the property). This made it a perfect choice to emphasize the loving loyalty due between spouses.
I am full of admiration for these two brilliant poems.
I know the word brilliant can be overused but the picture that you paint with your words of Margaret and Malcolm is truly brilliant.
Every time I read your poetry I find myself googling something or other afterwards. Thank you , I feel very fortunate to be able to enjoy such poetry and learn so much at the same time.
Mia, I’m very pleased that you find this word-painting brilliant. Since I imagine myself to be speaking for Margaret, I have done my best to make her eloquent in her love for her husband. She was a literate woman of words; he was an illiterate man of deeds, admirable in what he accomplished. I’m glad her love for him shines through!
Trying to find something not already said, I’ll linger on the enjoyment of thirled and froward, like finding gems. Also, I loved the couplet, “Kiss my hand, embrace more nearly, | Let us marry cavalierly.” Also, I just love straightforward, unapologetic love poems, especially historical ones.
It’s like a glass of clean, clear water when I’ve been drinking mud for months (comment on a lit crit class I’m currently taking, a not very well disguised marxism training session).
Thank you, Daniel. I hadn’t thought of the virtue of straightforward, unapologetic love poems–but there are many that make excuses for loving, or try to fight the feeling, or describe miseries and whine in complaint. I share your taste for the other kind!
My sympathy on the literary criticism class. Never as interesting as literature itself, and these days likely to be reductionist, applying Marxism or feminism or environmentalism or another -ism in some way that kills the joy and discovery of reading. But take heart! I am reading a good book that I hope to review for SCP when I have time to finish it and analyze and write it up. Best wishes with your efforts.
I love the musical feel and sound of these poems. I especially like the contrasts in part II (Leaden sky/pearly heaven; Grand law/harsh land; calm/tempest) and the lines “Meet me, my meteoric monarch” and “Your voice is thunder writ in lightning.”
Thanks, Cynthia. Sound and music are the essence of song, and I’m pleased that you enjoyed these. I’ve not written many original songs.
There’s a line from a C. S. Lewis book: “For the first time in all those years she tasted the word King itself with all linked associations of battle, marriage, priesthood, mercy, and power.”
In these poems, you can taste the word.
I would also say the pictures in the poems are much richer than the picture that accompanies them.
These are love songs from a saint to a king, and her thoughts about their two vocations in royalty make them different from other love songs–or so I hope. I love the fact that you can taste kingship! And thank you, Monika, for complimenting the wealth of my pictures.
I love both of these poems, Margaret. I do not have much time to give them the detailed reading I’d prefer, but I find them to be delightful presentations of love (am I correct in using the term “courtly love” here?) You present a time and place of which I know little and so your work provides a much-needed introduction to Scottish history. The forms of both poems are quite intriguing — I love the opening line of each stanza of poem I, each of which is an apostrophe to Malcolm and which gives it a lovely musicality and even an intimacy. I’m intrigued by the a-b-c-b-d-b-e-b rhyme scheme in II which gives the poem both great discipline and great freedom. Is this a recognized form?
Brian, I’m pleased you love these love poems. We’d have to call them “courtly love” in a different sense than those words have come to mean in historical literary terms. That “fin amor” in French may be passionate love, but rarely between husband and wife. Malcolm devotes “courtly words” to Margaret because they are both children of royal houses, and it was politic of him to marry her when (by chance of weather) she was blown into his kingdom. The story goes that her mother Agatha had intended to return to Hungary, where Agatha was related to King Saint Stephen. Her children would have been safe there after the death of her husband (called back to England as heir apparent to the English crown). But it is documented that Malcolm fell in love when he saw Margaret, and my poems simply imagine the emotions on her part, supported by the record of their happy marriage.
I came up with the forms after reading many songs in an old book of obscure Scottish poetry. In the first, I decided on the name as a sort of refrain, because lovers tend to be enchanted with the beloved’s name. That’s an original touch. The stanza rhyme scheme could be called Mabba, with the b lines always a feminine rhyme, and capital letter M representing the name. The mixture of masculine and feminine rhymes has a songlike musical effect. The second poem has rhyme scheme xaxaxaxa in my style of notation (using an x when there is no rhyme). In it the tetrameter x lines have feminine rhythm, and the trimeter a lines masculine rhyme. You’re right that there is freedom in not having to rhyme every line, and discipline in paying attention to line length and alternating masculine rhyme with feminine rhythm. The challenge was real and the effect unusual compared to most poems I’ve done!
The wording is quite delightful: “Sweetly you commanded, Malcolm,
Birnam Wood to Dunsinane” and “Let us marry cavalierly / Wild in your heart-witching way” and “Your voice is thunder writ in lightning.” I did wonder if “sweetly” is the proper adverb of “commanded,” but I’ll not quibble. I’ll just enjoy the music.
You can’t quibble with a young lady in love!
Everything the gentleman does is sweet (at least in the sweet stanza). And when he commands a wood to move, he has to use enchantment. We know that he needs, instead, to be clear when telling his men to cut down branches and carry them, but that’s minor. So glad you like the wording!
Thank you Margaret for another beautifully composed history lesson and love story, I really appreciate your poetry.
Thank you, Yael. I really loved writing these!
Very enjoyable poetry, Margaret, but dealing with history is one thing; what I always enjoy is the subtext: I could be wrong but there is suppressed eroticism in this that is most commendable – hot even!
Yes, James, the erotic quality is a bit suppressed, but definitely commendable for an exciting and satisfying marriage. This is something I wanted to show, even though unmentioned in the source. Thanks for your response!
Margaret, I am sorry to have been absent reader in these recent days, because of health concerns in our family.
But what a pleasure to come back and find out what happened to the Malcolm we all know from Shakespeare. I know virtually nothing about Scottish history) and these two poems make the most elegant introduction I can imagine. The rhyme schemes are particularly attractive.
In one of your comments above, if I understand properly, you refer to Margaret as a “saint.” If so, when will we get to hear more about that!
Tom, thank you so much for reading and commenting. I hope you and your family will be having a wonderful Thanksgiving tomorrow, with health concerns overcome or at least diminished. Saint Margaret of Scotland is my baptismal patroness. I have written one earlier poem about her published here, which you saw back in June, but if you want to re-read, here’s the link:
https://classicalpoets.org/2023/06/29/a-poem-on-saint-margarets-gospels-miracle-of-the-book-by-margaret-coats/
I hope to do more, though not all will appear here. But I’ll keep you in mind as an interested reader!
Greatly enjoyed both poems, the painting and the thread. I’ve come to expect enlightenment when I see your name, Margaret, and I’m never disappointed.
Thanks for your appreciation, jd! Hope you and your family have a happy Thanksgiving!