Poem of the Day: ‘To Lucasta, Going to the Wars’
Richard Lovelace’s poem is slick in the way only the 17th century seemed to manage with this much aplomb.
Richard Lovelace (1618–1657) was a Cavalier, which meant he loved women, wrote poetry, rode a horse well, and rode that horse to war. Unfortunately, he lost the English Civil War, his most important war, dying in poverty during the kingless rule of Oliver Cromwell.
Grouped with the “Tribe of Ben” — Robert Herrick, Thomas Carew, and Sir John Suckling, poets who saw themselves as followers of Ben Jonson (1572–1637) — Lovelace was one of the Royalists who loved the social scenes of courtly life. Among his better-known poems are his song “Why should you swear I am forsworn” (which appeared as a New York Sun Poem of Day over a year ago), and “To Althea, from Prison,” with its famous lines “Stone Walls do not a Prison make, / Nor Iron bars a Cage.”
And then there’s today Poem of the Day, “To Lucasta, Going to the Wars.” Written in common measure — the meter alternating four- and three-foot lines, rhymed abab — the poem is slick in the way only the 17th century seemed to manage with this much aplomb. Lovelace admits he is leaving his lover to go off to join the boys in battle, but he urges her not to see this as betrayal. For “this inconstancy is such / As you too shall adore” — since “I could not love thee (Dear) so much, / Lov’d I not Honour more.”
To Lucasta, Going to the Wars
by Richard Lovelace
Tell me not (Sweet) I am unkind,
That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind
To war and arms I fly.
True, a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.
Yet this inconstancy is such
As you too shall adore;
I could not love thee (Dear) so much,
Lov’d I not Honour more.
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With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems are drawn from the deep traditions of English verse: the great work of the past and the living poets who keep those traditions alive. The goal is always to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.
