SAMUEL DANIEL'S POEM - LOVE IS A SICKNESS

     

     

On the 10 ^th day of the Blog chatter’s #WRITEAPAGEADAY, Here is a poem with love as the major theme.

 

Poet: Samuel Daniel

Poem:  Love is a sickness

       Love is a sickness full of woes,

          All remedies refusing;

       A plant that with most cutting grows,

        Most barren with best using.

      Why so?

    More we enjoy it, more it dies;

     If not enjoyed, it sighting cries,

     Hey ho!

 

    Love is a torment of the mind,

    A tempest everlasting;

   And Jove hath made it of a kind

   Not well, not full, nor fasting.

   Why so?

  More we enjoy it, more it dies;

   If not enjoyed, it sighing cries,

   Hey ho!

 

 

Samuel Daniel was born in Somersetshire in 1562 or 1563, and little is known of his early life. His father is said to have been John Daniel, a musician. He matriculated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, on 17 November 1581 and left three years later, apparently without taking a degree.  He was tutor to William Herbert, Third Earl of Pembroke who later became Shakespeare's patron.  During parts of 1585-1590 he traveled on the Continent, likely developing the knowledge of French and Italian literature which was to influence his dramatic work.

 He was admired as a lyric poet and historian along with it he has found few enthusiastic readers for his dramatic works. Sober minded, restrained, reflective, and frequently prosaic, Daniel stands outside the popular-stage tradition, yet as an innovator he is of considerable importance in the history of Renaissance drama. 

He published Delia, a collection of sonnets in 1592, The Complaynt of Rosamund in the same year, and Cleopatra, a Senecan tragedy in 1594. His Defense of Rhyme (1603) was a reply to  Thomas Campion ‘s essay on the Art of English Poesy which contended that the English language was not suitable for rhymed verse. Daniel also wrote an epic poem Civil Wars (completed 1609), Certain Small Poems (1605), and several court masques which won him favour with Queen Anne.

Daniel was much admired by his contemporaries as well as later poets for his clarity of expression, technical skill, and versatility. "I know I shall be read among the rest / So long as men speak English" was his confident self-appraisal.