Mark Alexander Boyd (13 January 1562 – 10 April 1601) was a

Scottish Scottish usually refers to something of, from, or related to Scotland, including: *Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family native to Scotland *Scottish English *Scottish national identity, the Scottish ide ...

poet and soldier of fortune. He was born in

Ayrshire Ayrshire ( gd, Siorrachd Inbhir Àir, ) is a historic county and registration county in south-west Scotland, located on the shores of the Firth of Clyde. Its principal towns include Ayr, Kilmarnock and Irvine and it borders the counties of Re ...

, Scotland. His father was from Penkill,

Carrick Carrick is an Anglicised version of ''creag/carraig'', Gaelic for "rock", and may refer to: People *Carrick (surname) * Donnchadh, Earl of Carrick (died 1250), Scottish Mormaer and first Earl of Carrick * Marjorie of Carrick (1256–1292), ...

, in

. He was educated under the care of his uncle, the Archbishop of Glasgow, James Boyd of Trochrig. As a young man, he left Scotland for France, where he studied

civil law Civil law may refer to: * Civil law (common law), the part of law that concerns private citizens and legal persons * Civil law (legal system), or continental law, a legal system originating in continental Europe and based on Roman law ** Private la ...

. He took part in the French Wars of Religion, serving in the army of Henri III. He had two collections of Latin poems published, in 1590 and 1592, at a time when he was teaching at the College of Guienne in Bordeaux. He returned to Scotland in 1596, and died back in Ayrshire on 10 April 1601. He is now remembered for one poem in

Scots Scots usually refers to something of, from, or related to Scotland, including: * Scots language, a language of the West Germanic language family native to Scotland * Scots people, a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland * Scoti, a Latin na ...

, the ''Sonnet of Venus and Cupid'', which was attributed to him by Arthur Quiller-Couch in 1900, and which

Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...

called "the most beautiful sonnet in the language"Pound, Ezra (1934), p. 134

Works

* * Epistolae Heroides et Hymni (1592)Boyd, Mark Alexander (1592), ''Epistolae Heroides et Hymni'',

Jérôme Haultin Pierre Haultin (c. 1510 – 1587) was a French printer, publisher, punchcutter and typefounder. He was the nephew of the famous Parisian women printer Charlotte Guillard. As a punchcutter, he may have been trained by Claude Garamont, who wo ...

, La Rochelle * Sonnet of Venus and Cupid

References

Bibliography

*Pound, Ezra. ''ABC of Reading'' (1934) New Directions (reprint).

External links

Significant Scots
Scottish soldiers 16th-century Scottish poets 16th-century soldiers 16th-century Scottish people Lallans poets 1562 births 1601 deaths Scottish mercenaries {{Scotland-poet-stub