Selected Works (Earl of Rochester)

by Wilmot, John; Ellis, H. Frank

• ISBN13: 9780140424591
• ISBN10: 0140424598
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-12-15
• Publisher: Penguin Classics

Summary

The brightest star at the court of King Charles II, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647-80), lived a life of reckless debauchery and sexual adventuring that led to his death at the age of thirty-three - described by Samuel Johnson as having blazed out his youth and health in lavish voluptuousness . Rochester was also one of the wittiest and most complex poets of the seventeenth century, writing comic verse, scurrilous satires and highly explicit erotica - from the bawdy self-portrait in The Maimed Debauchee and the tender passion of Absent from thee I languish still to the comic world-weariness of Upon Nothing and A Satyr against Mankind , which mocks human follies. With endless literary disguises, rhymes and alliteration, humour and humanity, Rochester s poems hold up a mirror to the extravagances and absurdities of his age.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Table of Dates	ix
Further Reading	xiii
To His Sacred Majesty	3	(1)
To his Mistress	3	(2)
Verses put into a Lady's Prayer-book	5	(1)
Rhyme to Lisbon	6	(1)
Song (Give me leave to rail at you)	6	(1)
From Mistress Price, Maid of Honour to Her Majesty, who sent [Lord Chesterfield] a Pair of Italian Gloves	6	(1)
Under King Charles II's Picture	7	(1)
To his more than Meritorious Wife	7	(1)
Rochester Extempore	8	(1)
Spoken Extempore to a Country Clerk after having heard him Sing Psalms	8	(1)
The Platonic Lady	8	(1)
Song (As Cloris full of harmless thought)	9	(1)
Song to Cloris (Fair Cloris in a pigsty lay)	10	(1)
To Corinna	11	(1)
Song (Phillis, be gentler, I advise)	11	(1)
[Could I but make my wishes insolent]	12	(1)
[The gods by right of nature must possess]	13	(1)
To Love	13	(2)
The Imperfect Enjoyment	15	(2)
On King Charles	17	(1)
A Ramble in St James's Park	18	(4)
Song (Love a woman? You're an ass)	22	(1)
Seneca's Troas, Act 2. Chorus	23	(1)
Tunbridge Wells	24	(5)
Artemisa to Chloe. A Letter from a Lady in the Town to a Lady in the Country concerning the Loves of the Town	29	(7)
Timon. A Satyr	36	(4)
A Dialogue between Strephon and Daphne	40	(3)
The Fall	43	(1)
The Mistress	43	(1)
A Song (Absent from thee I languish still)	44	(1)
A Song of a Young Lady. To her Ancient Lover	45	(1)
A Satyr against Mankind	46	(6)
Plain Dealing's Downfall	52	(1)
[What vain, unnecessary things are men!]	52	(2)
Consideratus, Considerandus	54	(1)
Scene i. Mr Dainty's Chamber	55	(1)
The Maimed Debauchee	56	(1)
A Very Heroical Epistle from My Lord All-Pride to Doll-Common	57	(2)
To all Gentlemen, Ladies, and Others, whether of City, Town, or Country, Alexander Bendo wisheth all Health and Prosperity	59	(6)
An Allusion to Horace. The 10th Satire of the 1st Book	65	(4)
[Leave this gaudy, gilded stage]	69	(1)
Against Constancy	69	(1)
To the Postboy	70	(1)
[God bless our good and gracious King]	70	(1)
Love and Life	70	(1)
The Epilogue to Circe	71	(1)
On Mistress Willis	72	(1)
Song (By all love's soft yet mighty powers)	72	(1)
Upon Nothing	73	(2)
The Earl of Rochester's Answer to a Paper of Verses sent him by L[ady] B[etty] Felton and taken out of the Translation of Ovid's Epistles, 1680	75	(2)
Abbreviations and Short Titles of Works Frequently Cited	77	(8)
Glossary	85	(10)
Notes	95	(44)
Index of Titles and First Lines	139