JOHN FORD'S POEM - LOVE'S MARTYRS

  

On the 23 rd day of the Blog chatter’s #WRITEAPAGEADAY, Here is a poem with love as the major theme.

 

Poet:  JOHN FORD

Poem:   LOVE’S MARTYRS

 

 

Oh, no more, no more, too late
Sighs are spent; the burning tapers
Of a life as chaste as fate,
Pure as are unwritten papers,
Are burned out; no heat, no light
Now remains; ‘tis ever night.

Love is dead; let lovers’ eyes,
Locked in endless dreams,
Th’ extremes of all extremes,
Ope no more, for now Love dies.
Now Love dies---implying
Love’s martyrs must be ever, ever dying.

 

Ford, John, 1586–c.1640, English dramatist, b. Devonshire. He went to London to study law but was never called to the bar. The early part of his playwriting career was taken up with collaborations, primarily with Dekker.

It was not until 1606 that Ford wrote his first works for publication. In the spring of that year he was expelled from Middle Temple, due to his financial problems, and Fame's Memorial and Honour Triumphant soon followed. Both works are clear bids for patronage: Fame's Memorial is an elegy of 1169 lines on the recently-deceased Charles Blount, 1st Earl of Devonshire, while Honour Triumphant is a prose pamphlet, a verbal fantasia written in connection with the jousts planned for the summer 1606 visit of King Christian IV of Denmark. It is unknown whether either of these brought any financial remuneration to Ford; yet by June 1608 he had enough money to be readmitted to the Middle Temple.

 Prior to the start of his career as a playwright, Ford wrote other non-dramatic literary works—the long religious poem Christ's Bloody Sweat (1613), and two prose essays published as pamphlets, The Golden Mean (1613) and A Line of Life (1620).  Ford is best known for the tragedy 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (1633), a family drama with a plot line of incest.

 Ford was the most important playwright during the reign of Charles I. His plays are characterized by a sympathetic treatment of thwarted love, and they stress the conflict between the power of human passion and the laws of conscience and society.