Cavalier Poets – Interesting Literature

A Short Analysis of Edmund Waller’s ‘On the Friendship betwixt Two Ladies’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘On the Friendship betwixt Two Ladies’ was written by Edmund Waller (1606-87), who is probably best-known for his short lyric ‘Go, lovely rose’. Waller, whose life was as colourful as one might expect of a poet who lived through the English Civil War, is one of the wittiest minor poets of the seventeenth century, although not as great (or as famous) as his contemporaries, Robert Herrick and Andrew Marvell.

On the Friendship betwixt Two Ladies

Tell me, lovely, loving pair!
Why so kind, and so severe?
Why so careless of our care,
Only to yourselves so dear?

By this cunning change of hearts,
You the power of love control;
While the boy’s eluded darts
Can arrive at neither soul.

For in vain to either breast
Still beguiled love does come,

A Short Analysis of Richard Lovelace’s ‘To Lucasta, Going to the Wars’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘To Lucasta, Going to the Wars’ is one of the most famous poems by the Cavalier poet Richard Lovelace (1617-57). In the poem, Lovelace defends his decision to take up his sword and head off to battle, arguing with his beloved that it is honour which calls him away from her. Here is the poem, and some notes towards an analysis of it.

A Short Analysis of Robert Herrick’s ‘Upon Julia’s Clothes’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Robert Herrick (1591-1674) was an English Cavalier poet, whose 1648 collection Hesperides contains much of his great poetry. Algernon Charles Swinburne called Herrick the ‘greatest songwriter ever born of English race’. A number of Herrick’s poems, including ‘To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time’, ‘Delight in Disorder’, and ‘Corinna’s Going a Maying’ – but it is ‘Upon Julia’s Clothes’, an intriguing little poem of just six lines, which is the focus of our analysis here.