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Lord Rochester
EVERYMAN'S POETRY LIBRARY: This new series of the world's greatest poetry features the hallmarks of Everyman Classics: top-quality production and reader-friendly design along with helpful notes and critiques. Each edition is also a great value, especially for those readers beginning to explore the work of this remarkable poet.
- GenresPoetry
116 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
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About the author
John Wilmot
100 books70 followersSee 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
November 25, 2018
You can get a pretty good idea of Lord Rochester's character by looking through his daily schedule as described in ‘Régime de Vivre’:
John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester, was born in 1647 and died a mere 33 years later (of syphilis, everyone assumes). A favourite of Charles II and a war hero thanks to his bravery against the Dutch at the Battle of Vågen, he was infamous for having – in Samuel Johnson's words – ‘blazed out his youth and health in lavish voluptuousness’, something which he makes fairly clear in his poetry.
Reading Rochester can be a bit of a shock, even compared to the rakishness of other Restoration writers. He raises offence and obscenity to an almost sublime level, and, three and a half centuries later, there is still no writer who has managed to surpass the sheer shock value of some of his ditties.
Most critics deal with this material by means of a sort of indulgent condescension, but it is hard to dismiss Rochester as merely puerile because he could be such a gifted poet when he was in the mood. The offensiveness of his language and imagery is so inventively gratuitous that it becomes a literary technique, like, say, the hyperbolic bad taste of a John Waters film. But the obscenity was so intrinsic to his work that it became impossible for some to discuss him, and so, although he was hailed by many contemporaries (Marvell, Defoe, Voltaire and Aphra Behn all loved him), he was almost completely censored by the Victorians and did not really get reappraised until the 1920s.
I think the fun for modern readers is in getting a window on that decadent ennui of the idle rich, where sexual extravagance is just one aspect of a thoroughgoing anti-bourgeois rebelliousness. Clearly atheistic, he writes movingly about existential terror (‘Upon Nothing’ is one of his better poems), but is also disgusted by man's pretensions to rationality, calling reason ‘an ignis fatuus of the mind’. He was unceasingly disrespectful to royalty, as demonstrated in one of his more famous quatrains:
‘That's true,’ Charles supposedly said when he heard it, ‘for my words are my own, but my actions are those of my ministers.’ Perhaps annoyed by this forgiving attitude, Rochester pushed his luck further, writing a poem which described the King as the ‘proudest peremptoriest prick alive’, who ‘rolls about from whore to whore, / A merry monarch, scandalous and poor’. This finally got him exiled from court for two months. A couple of years later, in disfavour with the King over a separate incident, Rochester set himself up in the countryside as a physician treating infertility in women, calling himself (in a detail which makes the whole thing sound insanely like a French farce) ‘Doctor Bendo’.
His practice was ‘not without success’, it was said – but by then he was already quite near the end. He is a strange poet, combining technical skill and quick wit with the cheap thrills of toilet-stall graffiti, and an almost heroic bloody-mindedness when it came to the values of his society. He's definitely one of the most accessible great poets, and one of the most fascinating too, preaching a dissolute but surprisingly heartfelt doctrine of seizing life while you have the chance.
(Nov 2018)
I rise at eleven, I dine about two,
I get drunk before seven, and the next thing I do,
I send for my whore, when for fear of the clap,
I spend in her hand, and spew in her lap;
Then we quarrel and scold, till I fall fast asleep,
When the bitch growing bold, to my pocket does creep.
Then slyly she leaves me, and to revenge the affront,
At once she bereaves me of money and cunt.
If by chance then I wake, hot-headed and drunk,
What a coil do I make for the loss of my punk!
I storm, and I roar, and I fall in a rage.
And missing my whore, I bugger my page.
Then crop-sick all morning I rail at my men,
And in bed I lie yawning till eleven again.
John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester, was born in 1647 and died a mere 33 years later (of syphilis, everyone assumes). A favourite of Charles II and a war hero thanks to his bravery against the Dutch at the Battle of Vågen, he was infamous for having – in Samuel Johnson's words – ‘blazed out his youth and health in lavish voluptuousness’, something which he makes fairly clear in his poetry.
Reading Rochester can be a bit of a shock, even compared to the rakishness of other Restoration writers. He raises offence and obscenity to an almost sublime level, and, three and a half centuries later, there is still no writer who has managed to surpass the sheer shock value of some of his ditties.
She was so exquisite a whore
That in the belly of her mother
She placed her cunt so right before
Her father fucked them both together.
Most critics deal with this material by means of a sort of indulgent condescension, but it is hard to dismiss Rochester as merely puerile because he could be such a gifted poet when he was in the mood. The offensiveness of his language and imagery is so inventively gratuitous that it becomes a literary technique, like, say, the hyperbolic bad taste of a John Waters film. But the obscenity was so intrinsic to his work that it became impossible for some to discuss him, and so, although he was hailed by many contemporaries (Marvell, Defoe, Voltaire and Aphra Behn all loved him), he was almost completely censored by the Victorians and did not really get reappraised until the 1920s.
I think the fun for modern readers is in getting a window on that decadent ennui of the idle rich, where sexual extravagance is just one aspect of a thoroughgoing anti-bourgeois rebelliousness. Clearly atheistic, he writes movingly about existential terror (‘Upon Nothing’ is one of his better poems), but is also disgusted by man's pretensions to rationality, calling reason ‘an ignis fatuus of the mind’. He was unceasingly disrespectful to royalty, as demonstrated in one of his more famous quatrains:
God bless our good and gracious King
Whose promise none relies on.
Who never said a foolish thing,
Nor ever did a wise one.
‘That's true,’ Charles supposedly said when he heard it, ‘for my words are my own, but my actions are those of my ministers.’ Perhaps annoyed by this forgiving attitude, Rochester pushed his luck further, writing a poem which described the King as the ‘proudest peremptoriest prick alive’, who ‘rolls about from whore to whore, / A merry monarch, scandalous and poor’. This finally got him exiled from court for two months. A couple of years later, in disfavour with the King over a separate incident, Rochester set himself up in the countryside as a physician treating infertility in women, calling himself (in a detail which makes the whole thing sound insanely like a French farce) ‘Doctor Bendo’.
His practice was ‘not without success’, it was said – but by then he was already quite near the end. He is a strange poet, combining technical skill and quick wit with the cheap thrills of toilet-stall graffiti, and an almost heroic bloody-mindedness when it came to the values of his society. He's definitely one of the most accessible great poets, and one of the most fascinating too, preaching a dissolute but surprisingly heartfelt doctrine of seizing life while you have the chance.
Then talk not of inconstancy,
False hearts, and broken vows,
If I, by miracle, can be,
This live-long minute true to thee,
'Tis all that heaven allows.
(Nov 2018)
June 13, 2016
Jika inginkan sajak sajak keras dan melawan dari era kurun ke 17 dari England, ini lah dia.
Sajak sajak Satira Lord Rochester padat dengan mesej perlawanan menentang kebijakan Charles II yang dilihat lebih sibukkan urusan di ranjang dan membelanjakan harta negara dari mentadbir negara.
Berbeza dengan adik Muhammad Amirul Azwan, Lord Rochester tidak dipenjara, hanya dibuang negeri. Lord Rochester seorang Baron dan Aristocrat. Adik Amirul bukan.
Sajak sajak Satira Lord Rochester padat dengan mesej perlawanan menentang kebijakan Charles II yang dilihat lebih sibukkan urusan di ranjang dan membelanjakan harta negara dari mentadbir negara.
Berbeza dengan adik Muhammad Amirul Azwan, Lord Rochester tidak dipenjara, hanya dibuang negeri. Lord Rochester seorang Baron dan Aristocrat. Adik Amirul bukan.
November 15, 2022
An essay on Rochester is posted at https://williamseaton.blogspot.com/20....
December 23, 2013
top lad
EDIT: as much as I love Rochester, I feel like there are definitely better collections of his poetry out there. So that's a 4 for the poems, but definitely not for this edition, which needs a better introduction & seems far too short and limited in scope.
EDIT: as much as I love Rochester, I feel like there are definitely better collections of his poetry out there. So that's a 4 for the poems, but definitely not for this edition, which needs a better introduction & seems far too short and limited in scope.
February 2, 2012
Loved this. I do not generally like poetry but I immensely enjoyed the Rochester's satirical commentary upon society at this time.
July 10, 2016
Definitely want a better collection with more insight on Lord Wilmot's life and maybe little explanation to the era-specific words used. But this is after all Everyman's.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews