Vacation Reading

I'm finally getting to read my wonderful Christmas present from Mia - The Life of Robert Southwell Poet and Martyr by Christopher Devlin. It was published in England in 1956 and is so well-written that it's frustrating, because I can't parse all its historical and cultural references. For example:

It was well known that [Queen] Elizabeth never forgot her old friends, and this was soon proved in Thomas [Copley]'s case; for being affianced in youth to a sister of the elderly Lord Chamberlain, Howard of Effingham, he met a girl more of his own age, Catherine Luttrell, who 'liked him better for her beauty', and he jilted the Chamberlain's sister. The enmity of so powerful a person might well have proved fatal (and later did); but the Queen smiled on his new marriage, and stood godmother to the eldest son, Henry, who was born in 1560.

Feel free to explain that to one me, Elizabethans-for-Dummies. Thankfully, there is much that isn't sailing above my head, though it's so rich that the reading is slow. The book cites this unpublished Southwell poem as a pathos-laden expression of love for his own mother within Our Lady's 'lament for the loss of her Child in the Temple':

And art thou slain, sweet Lord, with cruel death
Through wretched spite and bloody tyrant's hand?
Or dost thou live, dear child, and draw thy breath
Yet haply hid in unacquainted land?
If thou be dead, then farewell life for me,
And if thou live, why live I not with thee?

And if thou live, how couldst thou leave in woe
Thy mother dear that brought thee first to light?
How couldst thou leave thy mournful parent so,
That for thy weale takes care both day and night?
How couldst thou go some other where to dwell,
And make no stay to bid her once farewell?

I first read Southwell in a collection of Advent & Christmas meditations by Rev. Benedict Groeschel, Behold He Comes. Fr. Groeschel included this poem in an appendix of beautiful Advent & Christmas prose, poetry, & lyrics (tip luminarium.org).

FROM St. Peter's Complaint, 1595

THE BURNING BABE.
By Robert Southwell

As I in hoary winter's night stood shivering in the snow,
Surprised I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,
A pretty babe all burning bright did in the air appear;
Who, scorchëd with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed
As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed.
Alas, quoth he, but newly born in fiery heats I fry,
Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I!
My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;
The fuel justice layeth on, and mercy blows the coals,
The metal in this furnace wrought are men's defilëd souls,
For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,
So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.
With this he vanished out of sight and swiftly shrunk away,
And straight I callëd unto mind that it was Christmas day.

Source:Poetry of the English Renaissance 1509-1660.
J. William Hebel and Hoyt H. Hudson, Eds.New York: F. S. Crofts & Co, 1941. 238.