Nearly 450 years ago, when England was tearing itself apart over religion, a Catholic woman named Lady Elizabeth Dacre wrote an elegant but at times erotic Latin love poem to Sir Anthony Cooke, a Protestant and tutor to King Edward VI, the successor of Henry VIII. 

That poem was rediscovered recently in the West Virginia University library, inside a 1561 copy of Chaucer. It hints at a love affair that was not to be.

"It's a very beautiful piece and I think for her it was quite a prized possession, because it's been so very carefully copied out and looked after," Elaine Treharne, a professor at Florida State University, told LiveScience.

While a visiting professor at the university, Treharne discovered the love poem in the library's rare-book collection inside the cover of the Chaucer book. Working with colleagues, she translated it from Latin and confirmed Elizabeth Dacre as its author. Her analysis, which will be detailed in an upcoming issue of the journal Renaissance Studies, also suggests Dacre wrote the poem in the 1550s or 1560s.

Love translated The first part of the poem, as translated by Treharne, seems to refer to a period in 1553 when Cooke, under the reign of Mary I, was sent to the Tower of London and then exiled. It reads:

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"The goodbye I tried to speak but could not utter with my tongue
by my eyes I delivered back to yours.
That sad love that haunts the countenance in parting
contained the voice that I concealed from display,
just as Penelope, when her husband Ulysses was present,
was speechless – the reason is that sweet love of a gaze ..."

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