Selected Works

by John Wilmot, H. Frank Ellis

While living a life of reckless debauchery and sexual adventuring, Rochester produced comic verse, scurrilous satires, and highly explicit erotica. His Selected Works , edited by Frank H. Ellis and now available from Penguin Classics, show him to be one of the wittiest and most complex poets of the seventeenth century. With endless literary disguises, rhymes and alliteration, humor and humanity, Rochester's poems hold up a mirror to the extravagances and absurdities of his age.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, 17th Century, British Literature, Fiction, Literature, Erotica

160 pages, Paperback

First published July 10, 2004

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

[Zoeb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not surprisingly, it was Graham Greene (who else, indeed?) who first brought John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester, to my attention. In his brilliant short story "May We Borrow Your Husband?", he referenced the libertine poet cleverly and adroitly - the protagonist and narrator is an aging writer working on a biography of the said figure, not unlike Greene himself who did write a biography (a book that continues to elude my search) too. And the short story too is about hypocrisy, sexuality and even love at first sight. That Rochester fascinated Greene is not surprising so much that it is only appropriate that one of the most empathetic and secular writers of the twentieth century would have found this poet so worthy of reappraisal. It is also a testament to the fact that there was more to this bacchanalian figure of frivolity that what meets the eye at a first glance. This concise collection of poems and writings, annotated meticulously with a glossary (I will never think of the word "ramble" in an innocent sense anymore) and notes, is a perfect introduction to the works of this Bard of the Bawd and also one of the sharpest satirists of his age.

Indeed, it cannot be denied that his erotic works are indeed peerless in their frank and fiery brilliance. "The Imperfect Enjoyment", one of his most well-known works, is a scabrous lament of random erectile dysfunction, a thing that most of us men will shirk at acknowledging publicly; "A Ramble In St James Park" reimagines that pleasant little garden of pigeons and squirrels into a hellish jungle of sin and sleaze; "The Maimed Debauchee" tells with jollity of an old impotent man who takes it upon himself to teach the young how to enjoy their carnal pleasures to the hilt and the savagely profane "To The Postboy" is a defiant rant by a certified sinner of his dirtiest, evilest deeds. These poems are indeed electric and arousing to the reader and are also enlivened with some strikingly nightmarish imagery - the mandrakes rising up from the garden or the cerecloths and ulcers on the body of a sinner and yet the musicality of his rhymes is equally entertaining to read aloud.

This same spirit of droll comedy finds itself expressed manifestly in his larger, more satirical poems - the irreverent picaresque character portraits of "Tunbridge Wells", the shallow hypocrisy of modern love in "Artemis To Chloe" wherein a woman of the city laments the state of romance in a letter to a woman of the country and the freewheeling ribaldry of "Timon: A Satyr" which mocks the burlesque antics of the aspiring poets among whom Wilmot himself moved in London's social circles. And the greatest of these works is the embittered and anguished "A Satyr Against Mankind" in which he lambasts civility and respectability and celebrates instinct, the id itself of human behaviour, against the superego of civilization.

There is thus also a sadder, melancholic side to Rochester, which proves his maturity as a chronicler of his times. The wistful "Consideratus, Considerandus" is a lament of the loss of virtue in the world and the collection also concludes rather suitably with the almost poignant "Upon Nothing" in which he gently and critically questions the very act of creation itself, making his query with God too, wondering why human beings have been unable to inherit the divinity of their creation and creator. And of course, there are then his impassioned, anguished love poems, which echo with a kind of melancholia and defeat themselves and linger in the memory as the words of a man who must have revelled in his carnal pleasures but was not free from the agony of his heart too.

What a notorious celebrity the Earl of Rochester might seem if he had written during the present day. It says a lot for how little have we evolved as human beings, able to judge his actions and his work in their proper light and willing, rather lazily, to condemn him as his exploits and actions would still scandalize many of us. Positioned as he was in the court of King Charles II, he would exhibit however no sign of hypocrisy in his actions and words. Had we the fortune to have him amidst us, at this age, when most talented and gifted people are afraid of confessing their vices and incongruities, Earl of Rochester would have been crowned as something of a hero, a rebel and as it stands, there is no denying the brilliance that shone through those tawdry words, the brilliance of a poet whom we need to rediscover in all his glory.

[Eadweard · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Naked she lay, clasped in my longing arms,

I filled with love, and she all over charms,

Both equally inspired with eager fire,

Melting through kindness, flaming in desire;

With arms, legs, lips, close clinging to embrace,

She clips me to her breast and sucks me to her face.

Her nimble tongue (Love’s lesser lightning) played

Within my mouth and to my thoughts conveyed

Swift orders that I should prepare to throw

The all-dissolving thunderbolt below.

My fluttering soul, sprung with a pointed kiss,

Hangs hovering o’er her balmy brinks of bliss,

But whilst her busy hand would guide that part

Which should convey my soul up to her heart,

In liquid raptures I dissolve all o’er,

Melt into sperm and spend at every pore.

A touch from any part of her had done’t,

Her hand, her foot, her very look’s a cunt.

Smiling, she chides in a kind, murmuring noise,

And from her body wipes the clammy joys,

When with a thousand kisses wandering o’er

My panting bosom, ’Is there then no more?’"
----



"After death nothing is, and nothing, death,

The utmost limit of a gasp of breath.

Let the ambitious zealot lay aside

His hopes of heaven, whose faith is but his pride;

Let slavish souls lay by their fear

Nor be concerned which way nor where

After this life they shall be hurled.

Dead, we become the lumber of the world,

And to that mass of matter shall be swept

Where things destroyed with things unborn are kept.

Devouring time swallows us whole.

Impartial death confounds body and soul.

For Hell and the foul fiend that rules

God’s everlasting fiery jails

(Devised by rogues, dreaded by fools),

With his grim, grisly dog that keeps the door,

Are senseless stories, idle tales,

Dreams, whimseys, and no more."
----



"Ancient person, for whom I

All the flattering youth defy,

Long be it ere thou grow old,

Aching, shaking, crazy, cold. ;

But still continue as thou art,

Ancient person of my heart.


On thy withered lips and dry,

Which like barren furrows lie,

Brooding kisses I will pour

Shall thy youthful heat restore,

Such kind showers in autumn fall

And a second spring recall,

Nor from thee will ever part,

Ancient person of my heart.

Thy nobler part, which but to name

In our sex would be counted shame,

By Age’s frozen grasp possessed,

From his ice shall be released,

And, soothed by my reviving hand,

In former warmth and vigour stand.

All a lover’s wish can reach,

For thy joy my love shall teach.

And for thy pleasure shall improve

All that art can add to love.

Yet still I love thee without art,

Ancient person of my heart."

[Lukas Evan · Rating 4 out of 5]

So witty, so dirty!

[Holly]

Read for Year 3, Semester One: Sex, Sects, and Scandal.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Libertine poetry at its finest: dirty, raucous, and occasionally truly beautiful. I especially liked the connections to the politics of the English Restoration; Rochester's insights on the king and his court, as well as contemporary London, are fascinating. My favorite poem was definitely the double-edged "A Saytr to Mankind" -- really intriguing look on whether or not reason really does elevate man. Plus, the "saytr/satire" pun allows you to imagine a wise half-horse penning the whole thing. ;)

[Keegan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best dirty poems ever. They would make ODB cringe. And that's why I love them. Along with Blake, Yates, Eliot, and Stevens, this is who I reach to when I want to read great verse and also learn something.

[Yasiru]

This one (chanced across via Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale and then dildos on Wikipedia) is probably one of Wilmot's tamer pieces, but it had me in absolute stitches- http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/...

[Mii · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a great read!

[Samantha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I typically enjoy reading poetry, but I never pick it up in order to be entertained. This was entertaining. But also shockingly vulgar based on what one might expect for the time. Short and sweet. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who thinks poetry is stuffy and boring.