Ben Jonson | Earful of Cider

I’m sure St. Valentine didn’t intend to become the patron saint of crappy poetry, and I know the Vatican hasn’t officially ruled on that, yet, but let’s not kid ourselves.

You can, as many do, ignore the brightly colored rhyme schemes and schlocky phrases, and go for romantic poems that were created for a less commercial purpose, but even then, there’s only so much one can do with the old standbys.

Call me burned out, but it’s getting to the point where Tom Hardy and Benedict Cumberbatch could knock on my door with flowers and ask me if they could Compare me to a Summer’s Day and/or Count the Ways, and I’d ask if they could help me clean out the kids’ playroom instead.*

The newer stuff, while more to the point, doesn’t always do it for me, either. Modern poems—and lyrics, too—always seem to be on one side of the scale or the other: true wuv that borders on Jerry Springer codependency or cynical Bah, Humcupidity:

Red is the rose
Green is the spinach
If you think love is all that
Just hold on a minute . . .

That doesn’t mean there aren’t poems about romantic love out there that don’t resonate with me, but the stuff that would have worked just fine when I was a yearning sixteen-year old or a defiantly single twenty-something just doesn’t feel the same to a happily married forty-cough mother of two.

So I sorted through my stash until I found three that don’t send me into sugar shock or a deep depression.

They’re all from the 17^th Century, which wasn’t my intention but doesn’t surprise me—surely no other time produced poets such as John Donne, who could so smoothly and suavely compare the natural growth of love with tax increases:

Love’s Growth
(John Donne)

I scarce believe my love to be so pure
As I had thought it was,
Because it doth endure
Vicissitude, and season, as the grass;
Methinks I lied all winter, when I swore
My love was infinite, if spring make’ it more.
But if medicine, love, which cures all sorrow
With more, not only be no quintessence,
But mixed of all stuffs paining soul or sense,
And of the sun his working vigor borrow,
Love’s not so pure, and abstract, as they use
To say, which have no mistress but their muse,
But as all else, being elemented too,
Love sometimes would contemplate, sometimes do.
And yet no greater, but more eminent,
Love by the spring is grown;
As, in the firmament
Stars by the sun are not enlarged, but shown,
Gentle love deeds, as blossoms on a bough,
From love’s awakened root do bud out now.
If, as water stirred more circles be
Produced by one, love such additions take,
Those, like so many spheres, but one heaven make,
For they are all concentric unto thee;
And though each spring do add to love new heat,
As princes do in time of action get
New taxes, and remit them not in peace,
No winter shall abate the spring’s increase.

And then there’s Thomas Campion, who was a lyricist, as well as a poet—again, I’d argue that all lyricists are—and while he appears to have written plenty of the usual rose-blush odes to love during his career, he does occasionally indicate that just because he knew what would sell doesn’t mean he didn’t know the score:

Never Love Unless
(Thomas Campion)

Never love unless you can
Bear with all the faults of man:
Men sometimes will jealous be
Though but little cause they see;
And hang the head, as discontent,
And speak what straight they will repent.

Men that but one saint adore
Make a show of love to more.
Beauty must be scorned in none,
Though but truly served in one:
For what is courtship but disguise?
True hearts may have dissembling eyes.

Men, when their affairs require,
Must awhile themselves retire;
Sometimes hunt, and sometimes hawk,
And not ever sit and talk.
If these and such-like you can bear,
Then like, and love, and never fear!

But I think that my beloved Ben Jonson wins this round, because it’s my blog and also my considered opinion that this is the kind of thing any woman of a certain age would be glad to hear:

A Celebration of Charis: I. His Excuse for Loving
(Ben Jonson)

Let it not your wonder move,
Less your laughter, that I love.
Though I now write fifty years,
I have had, and have, my peers;
Poets, though divine, are men,
Some have lov’d as old again.
And it is not always face,
Clothes, or fortune, gives the grace;
Or the feature, or the youth.
But the language and the truth,
With the ardour and the passion,
Gives the lover weight and fashion.
If you then will read the story,
First prepare you to be sorry
That you never knew till now
Either whom to love or how;
But be glad, as soon with me,
When you know that this is she
Of whose beauty it was sung;
She shall make the old man young,
Keep the middle age at stay,
And let nothing high decay,
Till she be the reason why
All the world for love may die.

It that doesn’t get you in the mood, you’re not paying attention.

What’s your favorite romantic poem? Song? Cleaning product?

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*After I hyperventilate and tell them who they are a couple of times in a croak because my vocal cords have seized up, and then drop like an ungainly pile of unflattering clothing at their feet,. And I’m not saying that after I recovered I wouldn’t hand them both copies of the first door stop-sized tome I could find around the house— Shakespeare’s complete works, Lewis Carroll, Stephen King, Anaïs Nin, the phone book—because who seriously cares what these two men recite as long as they don’t stop?

My parents are visiting this weekend, and since there’s no possibility of losing half my body weight before my mother arrives tomorrow evening, I decided the hell with it and turned to good ol’ Ben Jonson for some reassurance.

Ben Jonson (1572-1637) wrote poems I want to memorize and recite—no, orate*—while standing before a table of my good friends and lifting a mug of something suitably alcoholic in salute.

Whatever you might say about the man—does anyone still say anything about this man? ‘Cause they should—he had the 17th Century equivalent of chutzpah. In spades.

Hymn to the Belly
(Ben Jonson)

Room! Room! Make room for the bouncing Belly,
First father of sauce and deviser of jelly;
Prime master of arts and the giver of wit,
That found out the excellent engine, the spit,
The plough and the flail, the mill and the hopper,
The hutch and the boulter, the furnace and copper,
The oven, the bavin, the mawkin, the peel,
The hearth and the range, the dog and the wheel.
He, he first invented the hogshead and tun,
The gimlet and vice too, and taught ’em to run;
And since, with the funnel and hippocras bag,
He’s made of himself that now he cries swag;
Which shows, though the pleasure be but of four inches,
Yet he is a weasel, the gullet that pinches
Of any delight, and not spares from his back
Whatever to make of the belly a sack.
Hail, hail, plump paunch! O the founder of taste,
For fresh meats or powdered, or pickle or paste!
Devourer of broiled, baked, roasted or sod!
And emptier of cups, be they even or odd!
All which have now made thee so wide i’ the waist,
As scarce with no pudding thou art to be laced;
But eating and drinking until thou dost nod,
Thou break’st all thy girdles and break’st forth a god.

I might just have time to get this word perfect—with jazz hands, naturally—before tomorrow evening.

Jonson also had a bit to say about poetry itself, or at least the stuff that wasn’t up to his standards:

A Fit of Rhyme Against Rhyme
(Ben Jonson)

Rhyme, the rack of finest wits,
That expresseth but by fits
True conceit,

Spoiling senses of their treasure,
Cozening judgment with a measure,
But false weight ;

Wresting words from their true calling,
Propping verse for fear of falling
To the ground ;

Jointing syllables, drowning letters,
Fast’ning vowels as with fetters
They were bound !

Soon as lazy thou wert known,
All good poetry hence was flown,
And are banished.

For a thousand years together
All Parnassus’ green did wither,
And wit vanished.

Pegasus did fly away,
At the wells no Muse did stay,
But bewailed

So to see the fountain dry,
And Apollo’s music die,
All light failed !

Starveling rhymes did fill the stage ;
Not a poet in an age
Worth crowning ;

Not a work deserving bays,
Not a line deserving praise,
Pallas frowning ;

Greek was free from rhyme’s infection,
Happy Greek by this protection
Was not spoiled.

Whilst the Latin, queen of tongues,
Is not yet free from rhyme’s wrongs,
But rests foiled.

Scarce the hill again doth flourish,
Scarce the world a wit doth nourish
To restore

Phoebus to his crown again,
And the Muses to their brain,
As before.

Vulgar languages that want
Words and sweetness, and be scant
Of true measure,

Tyrant rhyme hath so abusëd,
That they long since have refusëd
Other cæsure.

He that first invented thee,
May his joints tormented be,
Cramped forever.

Still may syllables jar with time,
Still may reason war with rhyme,
Resting never.

May his sense when it would meet
The cold tumor in his feet,
Grow unsounder ;

And his title be long fool,
That in rearing such a school
Was the founder.