Poetry Sunday 26 June 2016

Presented by our inestimable Poetry Editor, Ira Maine esq

John Dryden,(1631-1700)
Dryden, of whom we have spoken in the past, was the first of fourteen kids born to Erasmus Dryden and Mary Pickering, a family of saints and scholars. Dryden’s grandfather had been vicar of All Saints, their local church in Northamptonshire. He was also paternal grandson to another Erasmus Dryden (First Baronet) who was a staunch supporter of the Puritan cause. To add to all this he was distantly related to the extraordinary Jonathan Swift, Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin and author of Gulliver’s Travels.

The 17th century in England had done the unthinkable. Charles  the First, the King of England had been taken out and had his head chopped off by his own people. Poor old Charles. On becoming king he had begun to behave as if he were an absolute monarch. The parliament objected strongly to this, particularly as it threatened its own power. Out of this came the English Civil War. Charles went to war with Parliament and lost. He was imprisoned, tried, and found guilty of treason. Oliver Cromwell was one of the signatories to his death warrant.

Man proposes; God disposes…

Regicide, at the time, was an almost unimaginable crime. Not only was Charles England’s  sovereign lord, but he was also, as head of the church, (and just like the Pope) Christ’s representative on earth.The shock waves from this heinous crime are still being felt today.

Following a few years of barbarity, visited upon Catholics by Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army in Scotland and Ireland,  Cromwell, the Lord Protector, died in his bed of natural causes.

Within two years,(1660) the monarchy was restored, Charles the Second came to the throne and one begins to wonder if perhaps the whole sorry nightmare might have been avoided.

The Royalists, to salve the collective regicidal conscience, at least now had someone to blame for the death of Carolus the First. In an orgy of revenge, they dug up Cromwell’s body, had it hung publicly in chains for a day or two and then, in a grisly climax, had the rotting corpse decapitated.

But Northern European, guilt-ridden Christian thinking, whether it be Catholic or Protestant, and tied irrevocably to the notion of terrible divine retribution, can’t shake off one simple notion; that simply by their allowing this regicide to occur, both Catholics and Protestants are all implicated somehow in the death and neither will escape God’s vengeance. The deaths of a few thousand micks is neither here nor there.

John Dryden lived through most of this turbulent century, wrote poetry and plays and attended Cromwell’s funeral in the illustrious company of John Milton and Andrew Marvell.

Interestingly, John Milton wrote his great work, ‘Paradise Lost’ as a married man. When his wife died, Milton wrote another extraordiary work entitled ‘Paradise Regained’!

Andrew Marvell wrote “To His Coy Mistress” which I have attempted to bring to my readers attention in these pages. He is one of the best poets in the language.

And now, without further ado…a poem of Dryden’s of  exquisite taste and sensibility…

This poem has no official title. It is known only by the poem’s first line.

Why should a foolish marriage vow
Which long ago was made,
Oblige us to each other now
When passion is decayed?
We loved and we loved, as long as we could,
‘Til our love was loved out in us both;
But our marriage is dead,when the pleasure is fled:
‘Twas pleasure first made it an oath.

END

An argument in favour of divorce, perhaps? Divorce of course, was not allowed in the Catholic Church. Interesting…