Selected Poems

by John Wilmot, Paul Davis (Editor)

"If I by miracle can be
This livelong minute true to thee
'Tis all that heav'n allows."

The Earl of Rochester was England's first celebrity poet, a man who epitomized the theatricality, licentiousness, and skepticism of the Restoration age. But his scandalous reputation belies the variety and sophistication of his work: his love poems set new standards not only for sexual explicitness but also for psychological acuity and lyric grace, while his satires broke new ground as much by the refinement of their ironies as by the brutality of their invective.

A fascinatingly contradictory figure, Rochester emerges more clearly than ever from this new edition, the first selection of his work in modern spelling to take account of recent revolutionary advances in textual scholarship. It includes only poems now securely attributed to the poet, in texts based not on the posthumous and unreliable printed editions but on the most authoritative manuscripts which circulated in his lifetime.

Paul Davis's superb introduction places Rochester within the larger intellectual movement of libertinism, and his notes help readers unfamiliar with Restoration usage to catch the subtler connotations of words and phrases. Of particular interest, Davis includes in the notes the texts of the poems that Rochester translated and imitated, illuminating Rochester's creatively intricate involvement with the work of his ancient and modern counterparts, a crucial aspect of his poetic genius.

About the Series For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Erotica

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1680

About the author

See John Wilmot Rochester for pseudonymous works by the Russian spiritualist V.I. Kryzhanovskaya.

John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester was an English libertine, a friend of King Charles II, and the writer of much satirical and bawdy poetry.

He was the toast of the Restoration court and a patron of the arts. He married an heiress, Elizabeth Malet, but had many mistresses, including the actress Elizabeth Barry and drank himself to death at the tender age of 33.

Reviews

[Cat · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not rly worth it beyond ‘imperfect enjoyment’

[emilia · Rating 3 out of 5]

hmmm interesting but once you get used to the 17th c. pornograhic content you realise these poems are just a bit shit... earl of Rochester is a wadham icon though

[Gastjäle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Compared to the world-weary cynicism sometimes apparent in Elizabethan poetry (by the likes of Raleigh), Rochester comes across as a disillusioned yet amused courtier. He rails at his enemies rather viciously when he wants to, but he does it in a boisterously humorous way—and even when he is at his most nihilistic, he comes off as a wit flashing a winning grin to his cronies. He could be a bit of a try-hard at times, and his witticisms weren't necessarily that trenchant in the majority of these selected poems, yet at times he could pull off pretty clever quips and raucously funny obscenities (the phrases "Cullen's bushel cunt" and "her very look's a cunt" prised a mighty distorted grin out of me, not to mention the vicious broadside oaths against the lacklustre penis).

I am glad that there is actually some obscene stuff herein, instead of being simply sly winks towards a relatively prudish audience. Before this book, I knew next to nothing of the Restoration-era morals, and I was quite surprised to find out that it was nothing like the Victorian age (don't ask me where this comparison came from).

At his level best, Rochester would marry his lewd wordplay and scathing lampoons with actually impressive imagery, be it ingenuous or not, like in the case of the fantastic "The Imperfect Enjoyment" or "The Disabled Debauchee". He even reaches some relatively profound depths with his "Upon Nothing", mocking in tone though it be. Yet overall I must say he left me rather cold, especially with his lengthier satires that usually were so stewed in contemporary squabbles as to soften the punches and make the poems less universally appealing. R's rhyming and metres were very staid, so the form did not exactly add much to his art. In fact, I would not entirely gainsay Pope's harsh criticism of Rochester being a frivolous holiday poet—he seemed like a gifted individual who would waste his gifts superciliously, with only half a heart. While he could be lewd in a dashing and powerful way, he could also be really (to use one of his favourite adjectives) dull with his predictable rhyming, constant hounding of rivals and sex-crazed nihilism.

In small doses, Rochester's rakish spiciness has a place in one's life. But in larger portions, especially when combined with torrents of footnotes and contextual fustian, the effect must not be far away from a mercury treatment. Though if the treatment works, "then to Phill again"!

[Truls Ljungström · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rochester är en av de där spännande individerna vars språk är ... oerhört salt, medan hans avsikter i regel är ganska söta. Han verkar försöka chocka, men lyckas inte helt. De flesta av dikterna är intensiva och ganska söta.

[brooke echternacht · Rating 1 out of 5]

Double-yuck

[Osian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rochester could be tiring, brash and highly offensive. I would have hated this man. There's some material in here that resonated with me, mainly due to some gorgeous turns of phrase but I was getting sick of his shallow criticism of his contemporaries and repetitive pornographic descriptions before the end of this very short volume. A pretty interesting figure, but not the most engaging writer of the era...

[Roman Clodia · Rating 5 out of 5]

"For did you love your pleasure less | You were no match for me"

I love Rochester but his poems have been out of affordable print for years. This new edition is based on Harold Love's Works of Rochester (Oxford, 1999), and is a good selection of the range of Rochester's poetry.

Writing at the court of Charles II from the mid-1660s till 1680, Rochester is clever, witty, mocking, scurrilous and deliberately bawdy. With his focus on mistresses, sexual encounters, constancy, love and the erotic, he draws on classical, Elizabethan and cavalier poetic traditions - but gives them a dynamic, energetic and sometimes very cynical edge of his own.

Rochester the rake-about-town is well-known - but his excellence as a poet is sometimes overlooked. His metrics are impeccable, and he's one of the only poets writing in English who makes the rhyming couplet work.

Like many other elite, courtly and now canonical poets from the Renaissance period - Thomas Wyatt, Philip Sidney, John Donne - Rochester's poems circulated only in manuscript and were first published in a `pirated' unauthorised version on his death. With a complicated textual history, editions of Rochester do matter, and it's only recently that we've been able to recuperate something that is relatively reliable.

[Milo · Rating 3 out of 5]

A difficult text for a man so delicate as myself to peruse. How my hands trembled, how nervously I peered up from the page, how red I became – all parts, cheeks, arms, toes. Such words, such words! I wonder, how much did he mean it? Do we peek into the world of a genuine non-comformist, or are we so deep in the irony? Is this provocation? Or is it a statement of intent? Who is the early and then the late Rochester? Did he regret the life he laid out for himself, with all its predetermined predicaments? There is, in this set of bawdy and raucous poems, a selection of serious existential inquiries. They are, themselves, cut through with wit and spite; but they are not – as some others are – this alone. They dig into the philosophical destiny of the Rochester position: a nihilism, a nothing-world, a void. Seneca is the ideal translation, and Rochester finds it in his extract from Trojan Women. Is this the foundation of the universe? On which the thorny rose, bloodswoon. The mind whips over to Shelley’s Epipsychidion, in which he – garlanded in flowers and cosmoses – justifies his unusually lax sexual ideology. That it is possible to love multiple women must be, in the name of justice, somewhere combined with beauty, and that beauty can express the justification in so many swirling words. Rochester, if he is serious, seems not to agree. He expresses the nature of his life in the manner of its living: crass, vulgar, funny, sharp. A thing need not join with Universal Beauty to justify itself. Perhaps humanity is not, in fact, ranked with those tall pillars and chalk-coloured men. Rochester, if taken seriously – and I am wont to take him seriously – therefore writes an interesting kind of satire, in that his subject and his conclusion is not conventional; his apocalypse is reality, and reality is not – therefore – evil, even if it does not agree with the general sentiment of good. There is something in it, something anti-nominalist, something that does not take the libertine as the smiling devil but rather the man with open eyes. A convincing argument exists for the counterview. That Rochester lived as he did aware of himself, and wrote as he did – through (as ever) characters and masks – so as to poke the amorality, or immortality, that swept about him. He played up to the part, he distilled the breadth of his life into this rude cypher, and set about a moral message delivered in reverse. That is, after all, the medium of satire. But I do not quite believe it. I see that Rochester satirizes everyone else; he takes his claim against the top-buttoned swains who think his way is not the way and who refuse to eat the pork scratchings because they explode in the brain. Eat the pork scratchings, because God made them to eat, and because we are hungry.

[Drew · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent read of a book my honey gave me for the holidays! I'm always a fan of poetry and have a fondness for many pieces from the 17th - 19th centuries. Rochester's criticisms and satirical pieces presage, and likely influenced, Pope in the 18th and Byron in the 19th centuries: such cutting wit delivered in verse! The introduction and notes to this volume live up to Oxford World's Classics standard: useful, insightful, and sometimes a pain to flip to the back to read!

I particularly liked "Song (Fair Chloris in a pig-sty lay)", "The Fall", "Could I but make my wishes insolent", "What vain unnecessary things are men," and "The Disabled Debauchee". Of his translations and imitations, I enjoyed "Seneca's Troas. Act 2 Chorus", "An Allusion to Horace. The Tenth Satire of the First Book", and "An Allusion to Tacitus. De Vita Agricolae". His satires were amazing and the three that stood out to me were "The Imperfect Enjoyment", "A Ramble in St. James's Park", and, of course, "A Satire against Reason and Mankind". From this last piece, I especially enjoyed this snippet from the opening: “A spirit free to choose for my own share / What case of flesh and blood I pleased to wear, / I’d be a dog, a monkey, or a bear; / Or any thing but that vain animal / Who is so proud of being rational. / The sense are too gross, and he’ll contrive / A sixth to contradict the other five, / And before certain instinct will prefer / Reason, which fifty times for one does err.” (p. 52).

The opening lines of “Tunbridge Wells” totally reminded me of the opening of Homer's Iliad Book 11. Rochester wrote "At five this morn, when Phoebus raised his head / From Thetis' lap, I raised my self from bed" (p. 65). I had read about this in Paul Davis's introduction, though I'd forgotten it by the time I read the poem. Davis had written "The only one of Rochester's major poems set in the country is 'Tunbridge Well', and its engagement with nature extends no further than an introductory line and a half of mock-Homeric description of the sunrise" (p. xxx). The line of Homer (which I dearly love) is: "Dawn from her bed arose by the side of good Tithonos, to bring light of day to deathless gods and mortal men" (Iliad, 11.1-2, Caroline Alexander, transl.).

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not recommended for the faint of heart. Wilmot's verse reminds me of the sex-addicted narrator of Palahniuk's novel Choke: nothing is too obscene or depraved to say or do. I would like to give the collection more than three stars, the poems are sometimes funny in a darkly comic way, but they in no way rise above that which they satirize. The narrator (and from historical accounts the poet) eagerly, perhaps obsessively, participates in that which he lampoons. It's difficult to determine if the speaker's perversity, cynicism, nihilism and hypocrisy are ironic.

He's at his best in the short works, "songs and love lyrics." Love here is used in a pre-Romantic Era way that appears to refer only to carnal obsession more extreme than common lust. These works tend to be well-constructed observations about prostitutes, mistresses, debauched duchesses and the absurdity of faithfulness. Sometimes entertaining, unabashedly misogynistic, often witty. Less amusing are his longer works, "satires and epistles," that attempt what might be described oxymoronically as a shallow seriousness. I guess it's true what they say, "brevity is the soul of wit."

A few are in the style of Horace and others, perhaps, of Catullus, but the speaker lacks both the charm and self-awareness found in these Roman poets. These are relicts of Restoration England, orgiastic celebration of release from a repressive Puritan dictatorship. One or two in a broad anthology are a bit of fun, but as a collection they become quickly monotonous.

[Jen Well-Steered · Rating 5 out of 5]

While sitting through the lockdown, I discovered that I really like reading magazines on paper. I also discovered that magazines are one of the few things you can't buy online. So as soon as bookstores were allowed to open, I was in my city's biggest one, finding the selection rather thin, since supply chains for current periodicals were also disrupted. Anyway, one of the publications I picked up that day was Lapham's Quarterly, and inside that issue was one of Wilmot's poems. It was so shocking and funny I laughed out loud, and immediately bought the book. Problem was, I was already reading Wordsworth's collected poems, so I didn't start this book until July. No, it's not for everyone, he uses the f-word and talks a lot about sex. But it's effing funny, and that's what we all need right now.

[Zara · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Earl of Rochester was an interesting person who wrote... interesting poetry.

'The Imperfect Enjoyment' was one of the first poems I read written by him and I feel that it describes his poetry well. It is about a man who ejaculates prematurely and then begins to insult his own penis.

Looking forward to learn more about him and his poetry.

[Ellie Kidger · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like how Rochester's personality shines through. He's rude and vulgar, but he's also well-read and clearly passionate about his poetry. This collection is a fascinating snapshot into the life of a 17th century libertine, in his own words.

[Olivia North · Rating 3 out of 5]

We love a messy bitch

“Alas I am, alas I am, a whore” (Answer) - me too queen <3

[Cameron · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Wilmot's legacy is rife with questions about authenticity, to such a degree now that it seems each age is almost able to choose what sort of poet they want him to be, and yet there does appear to be a single dark genius behind the poems chosen for this selection. It contains about two thirds of the poems now believed to be Rochester canon (updated with modern spelling), and is broken up into four sections: 'Songs and Love Lyrics', 'Stage Orations and Dramatic Monologues', 'Translations and Imitations' and 'Satires and Epistles'.

The dark sexual humour that runs through the vast number of these poems is offset by the brutal satire of seventeenth-century London society in others. They paint a blurred picture of a deeply dualistic poet who even today remains very much a mystery.

The introduction offers an insight into Rochester's life; his initial closeness and later fallings-out with Charles II, the position he held in the king's court, the scandalous and licentious reputation he had, the number of banishments he underwent, and his deathbed conversion to Christianity before his early death when he was only 33.

[Benjamin Karam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would place Rochester next to Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift. His morals may be questionable but his brilliant wit shines in every line.

[Lara Masuo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a dirty mind...