Great Nature clothes the soul, which is but thin, With fleshly garments, which the Fates do spin; And when these garments are grown old and bare, With sickness torn, Death takes them off with care, And folds them up in peace and quiet rest, And lays them safe within an earthly chest: Then scours them well and makes them sweet and clean, Fit for the soul to wear those clothes again.
This poem was published in its earliest form under the title “Soule, and Body” in Poems and Fancies by the Right Honourable Lady Margaret, Countess of Newcastle (1653), and appears as above in the book’s second edition (1664). It is in the public domain.
Margaret Lucas Cavendish (1623–1673), duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, was a prolific English writer across the genres of poetry, science fiction, drama, letters, biography, and natural philosophy. A pioneering feminist, she wrote in her own name in a period when most women writers remained anonymous. She spent three years as a lady-in-waiting to Queen Henrietta Maria (wife of King Charles I) at the royal court in Oxford and then in exile in France; it’s there that she met her soon-to-be husband, William Cavendish, then marquis of Newcastle, who remained a great influence throughout her life, encouraging her intellectual pursuits. Cavendish moved in circles that included Thomas Hobbes and René Descartes and, in 1667, was the first woman to be formally invited to visit the Royal Society. She is buried in Westminster Abbey.
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