Selected Poems

"If I by miracle can be
This livelong minute true to thee
'Tis all that heav'n allows."

The Earl of Rochester was England's first celebrity poet, a man who epitomized the theatricality, licentiousness, and skepticism of the Restoration age. But his scandalous reputation belies the variety and sophistication of his work: his love poems set new standards not only for sexual explicitness but also for psychological acuity and lyric grace, while his satires broke new ground as much by the refinemen...