On the 19 th day of the Blog
chatter’s #WRITEAPAGEADAY, Here is a poem with love as the major theme.
Poet: John Wilmot
Poem: Love and Life
All my
past life is mine no more,
The flying hours are gone,
Like transitory dreams giv’n o’er,
Whose images are kept in store
By memory alone.
The time that is to come is not;
How can it then be mine?
The present moment’s all my lot;
And that, as fast as it is got,
Phyllis, is only thine.
Then talk not of inconstancy,
False hearts, and broken vows;
I If I, by miracle, can be
This live-long minute true to thee,
’Tis all that Heav'n allows.
John Wilmot was born on 1 April—All Fools' Day—1647 to Anne
and Henry Wilmot at Ditchley Park, Oxfordshire, near Woodstock. John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester succeeded
his father to the earldom in 1658, and he received his M.A. at Oxford in 1661.
He was
ranked as a poet second only to John Dryden.
He was a court wit and poet who helped establish English
satiric poetry.
Rochester's
poetic work varies widely in form, genre, and content. He was part of a
"mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease", who continued to
produce their poetry in manuscripts, rather than in publication. The
majority of his poetry was not published under his name until after his death.
Because most of his poems circulated only in manuscript form during his
lifetime, it is likely that much of his writing does not survive. His poetry was widely censored during the Victorian Era,
but enjoyed a revival from the 1920s onwards, with reappraisals from noted
literary figures such as Graham Green and Ezra Pound.
Rochester is generally
considered to be the most considerable poet and the most learned among the
Restoration wits. He is also one of the most original and powerful of
English satirists. A Satyr Against
Mankind (1675), Homosapiens, Return and The Mistress were few of his
famous poems.
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