JOHN SUCKLING

1609-1642

Optional Poems

Why So Pale And Wan

The Perfect Lover.

The Careless Lover.

Ballad On A Wedding.

Desire Changes.

Loving And Beloved.

Drinking Song.

Phrases

I touch her as my beads, with devout care,
And go into my courtship as my prayer.

- Love Song.

I PRITHEE SEND ME BACK MY HEART

I prithee send me back my heart,

Since I cannot have thine;
For if from yours you will not part,
Why then shouldst thou have mine?

5 Yet, now I think on't, let it lie;
To find it were in vain ;

10

For thou'st a thief in either eye
Would steal it back again.

Why should two hearts in one breast lie,

And yet not lodge together?

O Love! where is thy sympathy,

If thus our breasts thou sever?

66

But love is such a mystery,

I cannot find it out;

15 For when I think I'm best resolved,
I then am in most doubt.

20

Then farewell care, and farewell woe;

I will no longer pine;

For I'll believe I have her heart

As much as she has mine.

Contrast this poem in quality of levity with Herbert's seriousness in

Virtue," and from such pass judgment on Charles the First's courtlings.

RICHARD LOVELACE

1618-1658

Optional Poems

To Lucasta, From Prison.

A Mock Song.

TO LUCASTA, ON GOING TO THE WARS

Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind,

That from the nunnery

Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind
To war and arms I fly.

5 True, a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field;

ΙΟ

And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.

Yet this inconstancy is such,

As you too shall adore,

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not honour more.

Observe the historical enveloping action of this lyric. Analyse the fine phrase.

TO ALTHEA FROM PRISON
When love with unconfined wings

Hovers within my gates,
And my divine Althea brings

To whisper at the grates;

5 When I lie tangled in her hair
And fettered to her eye,

ΙΟ

The birds that wanton in the air
Know no such liberty.

When flowing cups run swiftly round
With no allaying Thames,

Our careless heads with roses bound,
Our hearts with loyal flames;
When thirsty grief in wine we steep,

When healths and draughts go free,

15 Fishes that tipple in the deep
Know no such liberty.

20

When, like committed linnets, I
With shriller throat shall sing
The sweetness, mercy, majesty,
And glories of my king;

When I shall voice aloud, how good

He is, how great should be,
Enlarged winds that curl the flood
Know no such liberty.

25 Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take

(25-32) Cf. Shakespere, Rich. II. Act V. 5, where Richard, a prisoner in Pomfret Castle, makes a realm of his soul, peopling it with subjects of his brain so that he may still be king of England and uncrown Bolingbroke. Through the texture of his thoughts ever runs the red thread

of royalty once a king, always a king. Lovelace, like Shakespere, knew how to spar in a mental gymnasium. In this lyric he makes a good physician, a good curate, for a soul suffering from afflictions of the body. As St. Bernard walked all day beside Lake Geneva, seeing it not, so this Cavalier lover in prison forgot his body by thinking of that greater, other prison, wherein his soul was fettered to Althea. What English poets have composed in prison?