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    AC Benus
  • AC Benus
  • Author
  • 10/12/2021
  • 423 Words
  • 1,325 Views
  • 4 Comments
Poetry posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you. 

The Great Mirror of Same-Sex Love - Poetry - 20. ...then add two lovely boys...

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Two John Wilmot Poems

 

[If] I could love thee till I die,

Would'st thou love me modestly,

And never press, whilst I live,

For more than willingly I would give:

Which should sufficient be to prove

I'd understand the art of love.

 

I hate the thing is called enjoyment:

Besides it is a dull employment,

It cuts off all that's life and fire

From that which may be termed desire;

Just like the bee whose sting is gone

Converts the owner to a drone.

 

I love a youth will give me leave

His body in my arms to wreathe;

To press him gently, and to kiss;

To sigh, and look with eyes that wish

For what, if I could once obtain,

I would neglect with flat disdain.

 

I'd give him liberty to toy

And play with me, and count it joy.

Our freedom should be full complete,

And nothing wanting but the feat.

Let's practice, then, and we shall prove

These are the only sweets of love.

—John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester[i]

1672

 

 

 

Upon His Drinking a Bowl

 

Vulcan, contrive me such a Cup

As Nestor used of old;

Show all thy skill to trim it up,

Damask it round with Gold.

 

Make it so large that filled with Sack

Up to the swelling brim;

Vast toasts on the delicious lake,

Like ships at sea may swim.

 

Engrave no battle on his cheek,

With war I've naught to do;

I'm none of those that took Maastricht,

Nor Yarmouth leaguer knew.

 

Let it no name of planets tell,

Fixed stars or constellation;

For I am no Sir Sidrophel,

Nor none of his relation.

 

But carve thereon a spreading vine,

Then add two lovely boys;

Their limbs in amorous folds entwine,

The type of future joys.

 

Cupid and Bacchus my saints are,

May drink and love still reign;

With wine I wash away my cares,

And then to c*nt again.

—John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester[ii]

1673

 

spacer.png

Bartolomeo Manfredi, Bacchus and a Drinker, circa 1600

 

 

 

 

 

 

[i] “[If] I could love thee till I die” John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester The Complete Poems (Las Vegas 2006), ps. 87-88 under the spurious title “The Platonic Lady”, which was added as gay-erasure by an editor two decades after the poet’s death.

https://archive.org/details/completepoemsofe0000roch/page/86/mode/2up

[ii] “Upon His Drinking a Bowl” John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester The Complete Poems (Las Vegas 2006), ps. 99-100

https://archive.org/details/completepoemsofe0000roch/page/98/mode/2up

 

_
as noted
  • Love 2
Poetry posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you. 
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AC Benus
On 10/13/2021 at 2:08 PM, Parker Owens said:

The first of these is delightful, erotic, and, as you say, treats same-sex love quite seriously. Your point about glib reference to sex with women leaps off the last line of the second poem. You will send me scurrying to find more of this poet. 

Thank you, Parker. I keep thinking of his generation having to pick up the pieces of his broken country after their civil war. It seems -- like say, the 1920s -- there's a need to unwind and not take the world so sincerely, since hypocrisy, regardless of place or time, is evergreen. So it is very interesting to see the poet be so unafraid to mention things that in theory should have meant his death. Perhaps no one took his written antics as true-to-life in his times, but which the 18th century reveled in as if gospel. Funny, I think Juvenal and Hemingway fall into this same billing of tall-tale tellers regarded as oracles of  history later on. 

Thanks again for reading all of these postings :)        

Edited by AC Benus
  • Love 1
AC Benus

I feel I should mention that David Vieth's staid 1960 edition of Wilmot's Complete Poems (p.26, in the 1968 edition) mentions "Let's practice, then, and we shall prove/These are the only sweets of love" seems to bear a direct inspiration from Marlowe's immortal lines "Come live with me and be my love/And we will all the pleasures prove." But this is further proof of Wilmot's intent that this poem be read as coming from a man to a man, as Marlowe's "Alexis and Corydon" was (and still is) the most famous same-sex love poem of the entire English Renaissance -- something evidently Vieth did not feel comfortable reminding his readers 

  • Love 1
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