John Suckling
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Sir John Suckling (February 10, 1609 – June 1, 1642) was an English Cavalier poet.
Contents
Sourced[edit]
Why So Pale and Wan, Fond Lover?[edit]
- Why so pale and wan, fond lover
Prithee, why so pale?
- Will, when looking well can't move her,
Looking ill prevail?
Prithee, why so pale?
- Quit, quit, for shame, this will not move:
This cannot take her.
If of herself she cannot love,
Nothing can make her:
The devil take her!
Other poems[edit]
- If I a fancy take
To black and blue,
That fancy doth it beauty make.- Of thee (kind boy) I ask no red and white.
- 'Tis now since I sat down before
That foolish fort, a heart,
(Time strangely spent) a year, and more,
And still I did my part:- 'Tis Now, Since I Sat Down Before.
- Oh for some honest lover's ghost,
Some kind unbodied post
Sent from the shades below!
I strangely long to know
Whether the nobler chaplets wear
Those that their mistress' scorn did bear,
Or those that were used kindly.- Oh! For some honest lover's ghost.
- Her feet beneath her petticoat
Like little mice stole in and out,
As if they feared the light;
But oh, she dances such a way!
No sun upon an Easter-day
Is half so fine a sight.- Ballad upon a Wedding. Compare: "Her pretty feet, like snails, did creep A little out, and then, As if they played at bo-peep, Did soon draw in again", Robert Herrick, To Mistress Susanna Southwell.
Unsourced[edit]
- Her lips were red, and one was thin;
Compared with that was next her chin,—
Some bee had stung it newly.
- Ballad upon a Wedding.
- 'T is expectation makes a blessing dear;
Heaven were not heaven if we knew what it were.
- Against Fruition.
- She is pretty to walk with,
And witty to talk with,
And pleasant, too, to think on.- Brennoralt, Act ii.
- Her face is like the milky way i' the sky,—
A meeting of gentle lights without a name.- Brennoralt, Act iii.
- But as when an authentic watch is shown,
Each man winds up and rectifies his own,
So in our very judgments.- Aglaura, Epilogue. Compare: "'T is with our judgments as our watches,—none Go just alike, yet each believes his own", Alexander Pope, Essay on Criticism, part i. line 9.
- The prince of darkness is a gentleman.
- The Goblins. The same is found in William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act iii, Sc. 4.
- Nick of time.
- The Goblins.
- "High characters," cries one, and he would see
Things that ne'er were, nor are, nor e'er will be.- The Goblins. Epilogue. Compare: "Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see, Thinks what ne'er was, nor is, nor e'er shall be", Alexander Pope, Essay on Criticism, part ii, line 53; "There's no such thing in Nature, and you'll draw A faultless monster which the world ne'er saw", John Sheffield, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Normanby, Essay on Poetry.
External links[edit]
- Selected works at the Library of Toronto
