Not a lot wrong with the boy Lovelace, to be fair. A fine pome and fairly memorable for a couple of lines, quote-wise.
https://charioteers.org/2011/05/23/to-althea-from-prison/
But, utterly trumped by the Parliamentarian Andrew Marvell, in my opinion.
‘To His Coy Mistress’
Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time’s winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv’d virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am’rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp’d power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
Boadicea's Chariot 
So the poet was a Parliamentarian, a Roundhead, a Puritan and seems to be trying to seduce a young lady? Sounds a bit cavalier to me!
Hmmmmmmm!
OZ
Ochone and good evening, Sheona, if it is indeed you and not your Southron husband.
In case you have forgotten in your time furth of Scotland, we Jocks pride ourselves not only on our joshing but also on our ability to recognise and respect quality wherever and whatever.
Google him and I think that you will find that Andrew Marvell was indeed a committed Parliamentarian but that he was not a Roundhead, a Puritan or a hypocrite.
Sheona – the ‘British Aristides’ was indeed a Parliamentarian, but he was never a Puritan. A rather sneaky type, it appears, although – “skilled in the arts of self-preservation, he was not a toady …” 🙂
Carpe diem, John, but wot’s it got to do with the Civil War?
At least Lovelace was in prison at the time of writing!
OK, fair enough they are at least a couple of lines oft quoted.
correction “there” not they!
Ara, just winding myself up into a state of self-righteous indignation about your forthcoming series. It’s what we Jocks have to do.
Still think that Marvell’s poem is better than Lovelace’s.
Haven’t even started to think about opening the Second Front by lobbing Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ and ‘Who Would True Valour See’ into the discussion.
I probably will in due course.
OK, it’s war! Smiley thing.
I thought that Parliamentarian/Roundhead/Puritan all went together and were “right but repulsive” according to “1066 and All That”.
If you pride yourself on your joshing, JM, you also need to be capable of recognising it.
Sheona.
We’ve already rattled Mr Mackie; he has to be a bit desperate to think about using Pilgrim’s Progress so early in the war. 🙂
Another thing, John.
Where’s the video clip. I say this with a certain smug superiority which is bound to fail!
Bother, especially since I forgot the question mark!
Sheona, I apologise for doubting you. My remark was unnecessary and clearly wrong.
Ara
Worryingly, you appear to know me too well. Have you been talking to Mrs M. behind my back?
Anyhow and whatever, here’s the video clip.
Aha, yes, I do know you well, Mr Mackie, and Mrs.M warned me about your cheating. 😉
Good try but at least it makes me feel better about my typographical errors!
Why “an poetic”, JM?
Is it some Jockish affectation?
😕
Good evening, Bearsy.
It’s a fair cop. I can find absolutely no justification for using ‘an’ instead of ‘a’ in Jockspeak or anywhere else.
Scrabbling frantically, I might try to suggest that I just liked the sound of it, that I was in a poesy-type situation where anything goes or that we are all free spirits who should push the boundaries of English.
But, I would not buy that myself so see little point in trying to sell it to you. Still quite like it but zapping it nonetheless.
I have to admit that it did, in some inexplicable way, seem appropriate. 😎
Does it matter what the political leanings of the two poets, Lovelace and Marvell, were? JM prefers the work of one, Araminta the other, but should they really be used in a Roundhead v Cavalier discussion? This seems to me on a par with thesps, authors and other “celebrities” trying to persuade the electorate to vote one way or the other. We may admire such people for their acting ability or skill with a pen, but there is no more reason to heed their “advice” than that of any other fellow citizen. And poor old Lovelace and Marvell can’t even protest.
Hi, Sheona
To be fair, I think that it does matter in this case. I totally agree with the suggestion that we should ignore celebs. of the Fry/Izzard/Bragg (aut Melvyn aut Billy) tendency. In addition, poets are, I personally believe, sometimes a wee bit suspect when you try to work out what they really believed in. It’s that muse thing. They keep flying off on wings of fancy leaving common sense and consistency far behind, in my opinion.
Take our own dear and inspired ploughman poet, the boy Robbie. Beloved of Marxists, Socialists, Nationalists and other assorted delusionals (my opinion) ‘the world o’er’
He also wrote:-
‘ Be Britain still to Britain true,
Amang oursels united!
For never but by British hands
Maun British wrongs be righted!
Probably would have voted UKIP if he had been alive today then!
So, accepted that celebrities are total wastes of space and poets are often foundations of sand.
But, I do think that you are doing Marvell and Lovelace a disservice. They lived through the Civil War and they suffered for their sincerely-held beliefs. There is absolutely no doubt that one was a convinced and constant Parliamentarian and the other loyally supported his King and his cause through good and very bad times.
If you’re not buying that, I offer you my defences that all is fair in both love and war when it comes to winding up Ara and that, I am, as usual, trying to josh.
John; I am not so sure I agree; I am mindful, in fact, of EM Forster’s warning – in Aspects of the Novel – of how ‘reading around’ writers, whether it is biographical, historical, or what they had for breakfast, can actually detract from the essential message. He warned against the top heavy, knowledge-laden approach to literary criticism, as opposed to simply reacting, intuitively and instinctively, to the beauty and the music of the language.
I think we need both, personally speaking, since we lose so much if we fail to grasp the wealth of classical, historical and mythological allusion in our literary heritage; it is like putting on a cloak and failing to notice the diamonds encrusted all over the surface. No one can read about the Laudian ‘blind mouths’ in Lycidas, without wondering who exactly Milton was attacking – just as no one can appreciate the gleeful celebration of human misery that is Voltaire’s Candide, without some awareness of the end of medievalism in Europe…
But still. I always maintain that literary ‘voices’ work best if you let their beauty come floating down the ages to speak directly to you. For that, you need to not look for hard facts, and nuggets, like diamonds and precious metals, but instead, listen, first, for their faint and watery music.
Haw claire.
Pure dead brilliant joshing, by the way. I probably deserved it.
Being a Jock, we only did English and did not have the luxury of splitting it into Literature and Language. Ergo, we had to sprint through the various poets. Whilst sound on L’Allegro’ and ‘Il Penseroso’ and happy to compare and contrast them ad nauseam, I need to get up to speed on ‘Lycidas’.
Off to read it to check out the ‘Laudian’ reference. If it is indeed the Blessed Bishop, interesting!
Don’t agree with you about ‘Candide’. Always been a Pollyana myself and still think that there could be worse views of life than a Panglossian one. I still choose to believe that Voltaire meant the whole allegory for the best in the best of all possible worlds.
J’y suis j’y reste. I could, of course, be wrong.
John; no! Not at all; Candide reads, to me, like some kind of list of atrocities, or some kind of series of war report from the front line of human misery and wretchedness – earthquakes, pyres; rapes, genocide, ending as always, with the trite one liner…’ah yes, but it was for the best, was it not, in the best of possible worlds.’
Voltaire gives us nothing less than a mass of cold blooded horror; a well of misery and evil, complete with randomness, disease, war and famine, and then satirises it, completely, by savagely and mercilessly ripping it to shreds, Monty Python style – in order to demonstrate the utter futility and evil of organised logic such as religion and political regimes.
JM and Claire, I agree that it may be more important to know something of the world in which the poet/novelist/painter/composer was living in some instances. In many cases the beauty of the poem shines through – I’m thinking of Keats’ “Ode to Autumn” or Wordsworth’s “View from Westminster Bridge. We don’t really need to know that Keats was dying of consumption or that Wordsworth thought the French revolution was the greatest thing since pain tranché. Historical events have inspired music like the 1812 Overture or Sibelius’s Finlandia. But there has been a terribly PC movement recently to condemn authors whose work was written in their own period and which is now decreed to be racist or anti-feminist or some such. I’m thinking of Hergé’s Tintin and Enid Blyton’s books. So in those instances we accept that things were different and the author should not be criticised for having lived in his own time.
That said, JM, I’m still not sure that you and Araminta – yes, I know she started it – should be chucking poets at each other. I can’t believe you’re trying to wind up Araminta. I could be wrong of course.
PS I never did appreciate Candide, Claire.
Wow! This is way above my engineer’s I.Q. I think I agree with Sheona, but I’m off to remedial lit to find out what all those clever words mean. 🙄
Help, I didn’t chuck a poet at anyone, Sheona.
And Mr Mackie was certainly trying to wind me up, in the nicest possible way, but he was also trying to balance the whole thing, I think. I think it was fair enough.
John, you are a dreadful tease, but I’m used to it!
Sheona; I think I have mentioned on here before how many of the professors at my uni spent a lot of time soul searching and agonising over the English literary canon, and whether it was ‘right’ or morally justified, or politically sound, for liberals, to appreciate it… I now think those debates were pointless, since good literature is eternal and stands on its own,regardless of era, like Art for Art’s sake.
So yes, I believe that post modern attempts to reinterpret, and sometimes condemn books, because they no longer conform to the rules of the day are at best, Orwellian, and at worst, akin to the book burning of the Middle ages. But good literature, like art, survives, regardless, and must, as Shakespeare put it, ‘shine more bright in these contents/Than unswept stone besmear’d with sluttish time.’
On Candide; I myself am not sure if I like it either, as such. It is barbaric and full of gratuitous violence, but I sincerely believe Voltaire wrote it with the express intention of churning stomachs, and of saving us, in a way, from ourselves. It should be read again and again, as a warning against the dangers of idolatry and medieval style oppression.
Claire
I couldn’t agree more!
And to those of you who say that literature should be judged on what it is – not on (stupid) contemporary opinions – Hear! Hear!
I would dearly love to be around in a few hundred years (or even less!) time – when the customs, opinions and mores of today are under the microscope of our descendants… I fear that it may be far too much to hope that the human race will have learnt not to be so *** judgemental of their ancestors.
Boa; thank you. It is just my personal opinion, but a rather strongly held one. I will try to find a link to the bit in Aspects of the Novel when Forster is talking about this. He urges us to close our eyes and think for a second, of all the famous writers as out of their times; just sitting in a room, sighing, muttering, perhaps, scribbling feverishly, or perhaps closing their eyes… in other words, to visualise them and their work as living, breathing creatures rather than enclosed like monuments within some great edifice of literary, historical and mythological knowledge.
That is my favourite image, I think; the idea of the embryo of literature as it took shape, in life, and as it might have happened.
I agree with you and Claire, Boadicea but surely the whole point is that for us to be discussing, and reading poetry and literature from several hundred years ago means that it does have a relevance and resonance today.
Plus looking into it a little more closely, means that one can also appreciate these poets too have “borrowed” ideas from those whose works they have read and absorbed, and so it goes on. I don’t altogether support the idea of universal truths, but poetry, literature and music touch on this and hence their longevity.
I’m well out of my depth here, since I really know very little about literature.
I would agree that only the poetry, literature, and music to survive must be that which has a resonance and relevance to today… that is why, in my opinion, one should listen to the words and sounds first, and not simply dismiss them because the poet, author or musician had opinions that do not accord with modern ideas…
‘I don’t altogether support the idea of universal truths, but poetry, literature and music touch on this and hence their longevity. absolutely.’
Ara; I agree absolutely, and to that I would add that English literature – almost everything up to Shakespeare – owes almost everything to the older literary traditions of classical mythology.
Yes, indeed, Claire, and I believe that knowing this and recognising how Shakespeare, Milton and etc incorporate these older literary traditions into their work adds to the understanding and the energy.
Keep calm, Bearsy; just remember that ejπ = -1
How do you cope with circuit overload, Bearsy. 😉
True, Ara, very true. The greatest feat of literature, as with all forms of art, is in taking the pre established order and structures, and shaping, bending or stretching them, and subsequently creating a new voice, or a new expression which nonetheless still draws upon the old.
Milton does this beautifully in Lycidas. He evokes the ancient classical tradition of elegy to pay tribute to a friend who has died – but then tells us that his pain is so great that he might jar, or break, the Muses’ string.
http://www.online-literature.com/milton/557/
You make me laugh, Bearsy…
I have, to my surprise, in ahem, middle age, found that scientists and rational thinkers are usually the best equipped to talk about the various currents and cross currents of literature and philosophy, because they are used to dealing with patterns and formulae.
Slap a zener diode on to dump the excess current. Next question?
… and with logical thought, Claire. Thanks! 🙂
Although whether it works both ways, is, I suppose, anyone’s guess… 😉
Only semi-conducive to logical thought, Bearsy, but now I’m out of my depth. 🙂
I got lost hours ago!
I’m going to yell transistors and the go to bed!
oops “then” but night all.
Interesting discussion. 🙂
Claire, Araminta – 😀
Not a word about Lorentz Reciprocity or Tunnelling, I promise.
Err! My brain hurts. Is this what going viral means?
Moving on, I thought we should have had a penalty against the ROI tonight. Kenny definitely got fouled in the area, in my opinion.
Oh dear, JM, do you mean we wuz robbed again?