I’ve chosen this piece as it’s a wickedly witty contradiction of the Platonic ideal of love being chaste and non-sexual.
William Cartwright, one of the so-called ‘Cavalier Poets’, was an Oxford University graduate who swiftly became a well-known preacher and dramatist. Although there is debate both about his origins and the quality of some of his work, I think this piece is a little gem.
Moreover, King Charles I valued Cartwright’s loyalty during the Civil War and is said to have worn mourning on the day of his funeral, following his death from camp fever in November 1643 aged only 32.
---------------
“No Platonic Love
“Tell me no more of minds embracing minds,
And hearts exchang’d for hearts;
That spirits spirits meet, as winds do winds,
And mix their subt’lest parts;
That two unbodied essences may kiss,
And then like Angels, twist and feel one Bliss.
“I was that silly thing that once was wrought
To practise this thin love;
I climb’d from sex to soul, from soul to thought;
But thinking there to move,
Headlong I rolled from thought to soul, and then
From soul I lighted at the sex again.
“As some strict down-looked men pretend to fast,
Who yet in closets eat;
So lovers who profess they spirits taste,
Feed yet on grosser meat;
I know they boast they souls to souls convey,
Howe’r they meet, the body is the way.
“Come, I will undeceive thee, they that tread
Those vain aerial ways
Are like young heirs and alchemists misled
To waste their wealth and days,
For searching thus to be for ever rich,
They only find a med’cine for the itch”.
© Natalie Wood (07 May 2014)
No comments:
Post a Comment