Poem of the Day: ‘Why So Pale and Wan, Fond Lover?’
Sir John Suckling, one of the Cavalier poets attached to the court of Charles I, asserts the pointlessness of sighing after a girl who, as we in the twenty-first century might put it, just isn’t that into you.
Sir John Suckling (1609–1641), dilettante, inventor of cribbage, belonged to the company of Cavalier poets attached to the court of the English king, Charles I, and his queen, Henrietta Maria. Like his literary confrères Robert Herrick, Richard Lovelace and Thomas Carew, Suckling counted himself among the “Tribe of Ben,” intimates and disciples of the older poet and dramatist Ben Jonson. The tribal aesthetic turned on wit, as well as on a throwaway gaiety that we might understand as a species of despair, a tacit conviction that beyond the immediate pleasure you grasp as it slips through your fingers, nothing really matters.
See, for example, today’s Poem of the Day, “Why So Pale and Wan, Fond Lover?” Its five-line stanzas in common or hymn meter, with an ababb, rhyme scheme, assert the pointlessness of sighing after a girl who, as we in the twenty-first century might put it, just isn’t that into you. Rest assured, fond lover, this isn’t a you problem. It’s not as though she had any intrinsic value, that you should keep chasing her. The only girl worth loving is the one who loves you. If this girl gives you no joy, says the poem’s speaker, then the hell with her.
Why So Pale and Wan, Fond Lover?
by Sir John Suckling
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?
Why so dull and mute young sinner?
Prithee why so mute?
Will, when speaking well can’t win her,
Saying nothing do’t?
Prithee why so mute?
Quit, quit for shame, this will not move,
This cannot take her;
If of herself she will not love,
Nothing can make her;
The devil take her.
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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 will be typically drawn from the lesser-known portion of the history of English verse. In the coming months we will be reaching out to contemporary poets for examples of current, primarily formalist work, to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.
