Here are two written by Richard Lovelace, the very model of a gay cavalier. While he was at Oxford, King Charles saw him and made him M.A. or Master of Arts, not for his learning, but because of his beautiful face. He went to court and made love and sang songs gayly. He went to battle and fought and sang as gayly, he went to prison and still sang. To the cause of his King he clung through all, and when Charles was dead and Cromwell ruled with his stern hand, and song was hushed in England, he died miserably in a poor London alley.
The first of these songs was written by Lovelace while he was in prison for having presented a petition to the House of Commons asking that King Charles might be restored to the throne.
TO ALTHEA FROM PRISON
"When love with unconfinéd wings
Hovers within my gates,
And my divine Althea brings
To whisper at the grates;
When I lye tangled in her haire,
And fettered to her eye,
The gods, that wanton in the aire,
Know no such liberty.
. . . . .
"When (like committed linnets) I
With shriller throat shall sing
The sweetness, mercy, majesty,
And glories of my King.
When I shall voyce aloud, how good
He is, how great should be,
Enlargéd winds, that curle the flood,
Know no such liberty.
"Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Mindes innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage;
If I have freedome in my love,
And in my soule am free,
Angels alone that soar above
Enjoy such liberty."
TO LUCASTA GOING TO THE WARRES
"Tell me not (sweet) I am unkinde,
That from the nunnerie
Of thy chaste heart and quiet minde
To warre and armes I flie.
"True: a new Mistresse 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."
James Graham, Marquis of Montrose, was another cavalier poet whose fine, sad story you will read in history. He loved his King and fought and suffered for him, and when he heard that he was dead he drew his sword and wrote a poem with its point: