ENG LYRIC POETRY.pdf - STIBA Malang

CAROLINE AMUSEMENTS
no odd becomming graces,
Black eyes, or little know-not-whats, in faces;
Make me but mad enough, give me good store
Of Love, for her I court,
I ask no more,
’Tis love in love that makes the sport.
For Suckling, women and poetry alike are not objects of desire, as they are for
Carew, something to be wooed and possibly won, but the opportunity for witty
conversation itself—and preferably a conversation that oscillates between mock
fastidiousness (“the Monsieur was modest”) and the shockingly blunt:
’Tis not the meat, but ’tis the appetite
makes eating a delight,
and if I like one dish
More than another, that a Pheasant is;
What in our watches, that in us is found,
So to the height and nick
We up be wound,
No matter by what hand or trick.
108
(“Sonnet II”)
The typical Suckling gesture is that of the highborn nay-sayer; he is beyond love
but not beyond speculating about the fortunes of passion in a disinterested,
humorously condescending way—“Do’st see how unregarded now/that piece of
beauty passes?”—or about how others, caught in love’s throes, might behave, as
in his much celebrated song that begins
Why so pale and wan fond Lover?
Prithee why so pale?
Will, when looking well can’t move her,
Looking ill prevaile?
Prithee why so pale?
For a moment, thanks to the repetitions, he seems almost interested in the
situation, at least long enough for the final jettisoning to have some force:
Quit, quit, for shame, this will not move,
This cannot take her;
If of her selfe shee will not Love,
Nothing can make her,
The Devill take her.