Planh for the Young English King

If all the grief and woe and bitterness,
All dolour, ill and every evil chance
That ever came upon this grieving world
Were set together they would seem but light
Against the death of the young English King.
Worth lieth riven and Youth dolorous,
The world overshadowed, soiled and overcast,
Void of all joy and full of ire and sadness.

Grieving and sad and full of bitterness
Are left in teen the liegemen courteous,
The joglars supple and the troubadours.
O'er much hath ta'en Sir Death that deadly warrior
In taking from them the young English King,
Who made the freest hand seem covetous.
'Las! Never was nor will be in this world
The balance for this loss in ire and sadness!

O skilful Death and full of bitterness,
Well mayst thou boast that thou the best chevalier
That any folk e'er had, hast from us taken;
Sith nothing is that unto worth pertaineth
But had its life in the young English King
And better were it, should God grant his pleasure,
That he should live than many a living dastard
That doth but wound the good with ire and sadness.

From this faint world, how full of bitterness
Love takes his way and holds his joy deceitful
Sith no thing is but turneth unto anguish
And each to-day Vails less than yestere'en,
Let each man visage this young English King
That was most valiant 'mid all worthiest men!
Gone is his body fine and amorous,
Whence have we grief, discord and deepest sadness.

Him, whom it pleased for our great bitterness
To come to earth to draw us from misventure,
Who drank of death for our salvacioun,
Him do we pray as to a Lord most righteous
And humble eke, that the young English King
He please to pardon, as true pardon is,
And bid go in with honoured companions
There where there is no grief, nor shall be sadness.

Ezra Pound

If I were to ask you to conjure up an image of the most famous Henry to rule England, you'd likely think of Holbein's portrait of Henry VIII, hands on hips and full of swagger. But what if I told you that the regnal count was slightly wrong, and that the last Tudor Henry was in fact Henry IX? A little odd and yet true, for one royal Henry, though crowned, anointed, and acknowledged as king of England, is forgotten. This is because Henry "the Young King" was crowned during the lifetime of his father, Henry II, and died in his late twenties before he ever had the chance to rule independently. Matthew Strickland does a marvellous job in resurrecting this neglected Henry. Though the sources for his life are comparatively few, Strickland does a good job of putting them in context. Strickland argues that the Young King was far from being the ineffectual gadfly that later medieval and Victorian historians painted him, but was arguably a more gifted and personable figure than his better-known brothers. (Not, admittedly, that that's a difficult thing to be.) I wished at times for a little less focus on military history, but on the whole a strong work. ( )