Augustan Poetry

Characteristics: forward propulstion, based on classic Greek and Roman forms

Lit. devices: satire, iambic pentameter, wit, irony, paradox

Styles: heroic couplets, mundane plots, use of current political events (allegorically and directly), mock epics

Major themes: human frailty, mocking of human behavior

Authors: Alexander Pope, John Dryden

LINES BY A PERSON OF QUALITY

by: Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

luttering spread thy purple pinions,

Gentle Cupid, o'er my heart,

I a slave in thy dominions,

Nature must give way to art.

Mild Arcadians, ever blooming,

Nightly nodding o'er your flocks,

See my weary days consuming,

All beneath yon flowery rocks.

Thus the Cyprian goddess weeping,

Mourned Adonis, darling youth:

Him the boar, in silence creeping,

Gored with unrelenting tooth.

Cynthia, tune harmonious numbers;

Fair Discretion, tune the lyre;

Soothe my ever-waking slumbers;

Bright Apollo, lend thy choir.

Gloomy Pluto, king of terrors,

Armed in adamantine chains,

Lead me to the crystal mirrors,

Watering soft Elysian plains.

Mournful Cypress, verdant willow,

Gilding my Aurelia's brows,

Morpheus, hovering o'er my pillow,

Hear me pay my dying vows.

Melancholy, smooth Mæander,

Swiftly purling in a round,

On thy margin lovers wander

With thy flowery chaplets crowned.

Thus when Philomela, drooping,

Softly seeks her silent mate,

So the bird of Juno stooping;

Melody resigns to fate.

Metaphysical Poetry

characteristics: brief and concentrated in its meaning, centered around dramatic situations, usually has conceits

major themes: love, man's relationship with God, & human frailty

styles: more realistic than renaissance poetry, focuses on deep philosophical issues

lit. devices: wit, irony, paradox, conceits

authors: John Donne, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, Henry Vaughan, George Chapman, Thomas Traherne, & Robert Southwell



WOMAN'S CONSTANCY.
by John Donne


NOW thou hast loved me one whole day,
To-morrow when thou leavest, what wilt thou say ?
Wilt thou then antedate some new-made vow ?
Or say that now
We are not just those persons which we were ?
Or that oaths made in reverential fear
Of Love, and his wrath, any may forswear ?
Or, as true deaths true marriages untie,
So lovers' contracts, images of those,
Bind but till sleep, death's image, them unloose ?
Or, your own end to justify,
For having purposed change and falsehood, you
Can have no way but falsehood to be true ?
Vain lunatic, against these 'scapes I could
Dispute, and conquer, if I would ;
Which I abstain to do,
For by to-morrow I may think so too.