My thoughts did ever more disdain a rival on my throne.
He either fears his fate too much, or his deserts are small,
Who dares not put it to the touch, to gain or lose it all,
But if no faithless action stain thy love and constant word,
I’ll make thee glorious by my pen and famous by my sword:
I’ll serve thee in such noble ways was never heard before:
I’ll crown and deck thee all with bays and love thee more and more.
I have dwelt almost exclusively upon the military and political aspect of Cavalier verse. A wider view would include the miscellaneous poetry, and especially the love poetry of Carew, Herrick, Waller, Haberton, Lovelace, Suckling, Cowley, and others, who, if not, strictly speaking, Cavaliers, were royalists. For the only poets in England who took the Parliament’s side were Milton, George Wither, and Andrew Marvell. Of those I have named, some had much to do with public affairs and others had little. Thomas Carew, the court poet, died before the outbreak of the Civil War. Herrick was a country minister in Devonshire, who was deprived of his parish by Parliament and spent the interregnum in London. Edmund Waller, a member of the House of Commons, intrigued for the king and came near losing his head; but, being a cousin of Oliver Cromwell and very rich, was let off with a heavy fine and went to France. Sir John Suckling, a very brilliant and dissipated court favorite, a very typical Cavalier, had raised a troop of horse for the King in the Bishops’ War: had conspired against Parliament, fled to the continent, and died at Paris by his own hand. Colonel Richard Lovelace fought in the royal armies, was twice imprisoned, spent all his large fortune in the cause and hung about London in great poverty, dying shortly before the Restoration. Cowley was a Cambridge scholar who lost his fellowship and went to France with the exiled court: became secretary to the queen, Henrietta Maria, and carried on correspondence in cipher between her and the captive King.
The love verses of these poets were in many keys: Carew’s polished, courtly, and somewhat artificial; Herrick’s warm, natural, sweet, but richly sensuous rather than passionate; Cowley’s coldly ingenious; Lovelace’s and Haberton’s serious and tender; Suckling’s careless, gay, and “agreeably impudent,” the poetry of gallantry rather than love, with a dash of cynicism: on its way to become the poetry of the Restoration wits.