In the Blake Bracket—a contest between Sir John Suckling and Lord Byron—“Why So Pale and Wan, Fond Lover?” and “When We Two Parted.”
Both poems are about love, and sticking to it—or not.
Why are there so many love poems in the old days?
The ‘Dante explanation’ is that the origin of poetry was the phenomenon of high religion moving outward in Letters (religion the only real Letters there was at the time) to the less learned.
The ‘more learned’ were, in this case, men, and the ‘less learned’ were, in this case, women.
Poetry was, in its origins, to put it bluntly, sexual/religious indoctrination of women by men, or, as it is known today, “mansplaining.”
The poetry which survived as the best models of this practice was exactly as one might expect—the poems of poets like Dante and Petrarch, and later the Elizabethan poets—appalling expressions of sexual excitement elevated to religious ecstasy, and masked by language which evoked serene, pure, delicate religiosity.
This type of poetry naturally died a quick death when manners changed, and men and women lost interest in poetry as the expression of love masked as religion and religion masked as love.
But the trope was powerful—the elevated language of poetry, the beautiful language of poetry, served two things at once—1. religion in the outward manner and 2. sex in the hidden, or private manner.
Modern poetry has no ready-made duality, the kind which naturally existed, and attended the origin of poetry itself, when religious letters spread out into the secular sphere.
Modern poetry has everything and nothing.
Modern poetry lacks manners, since manners no longer need to hide what religion is doing. Modern poetry even lacks sex, because without manners, hiding of any kind is no longer necessary—even as real life hides from the poet all the time. Real life isn’t codified—there’s no template—in modern poetry; looking around for its new poetic identity, Modernism seized on objects (Imagism) and quickly turned into a dreadful bore; modern poetry was kept alive in the tedious textbook; poetry was no longer profound/dirty or high/low; poetry was now democratic and plain; the public turned to Sinatra and Elvis and the Beatles—the Dante trope didn’t die at all.
The Dante trope was not really killed by the Modernists. The Modernists today still don’t understand the power of love poetry—and sneer at it, as romantic drivel. And most of it is romantic drivel, because the learned don’t write love poetry anymore. They write modernist drivel, instead. The learned alone will always be boring. We look back at the learned Dante and don’t see the excitement, because secular, over-sexed modernism is incapable of seeing the beauty because they no longer understand what the beauty was for—to hide what back then was filthy and forbidden; the priests using religion for sex, Dante following Beatrice into heaven because that’s the only place he could follow her.
Modern poetry has neither heaven nor the unspeakable desires—which are now commonplace.
Love poetry was popular for a reason.
The Renaissance—think of Shakespeare’s Sonnets—saw ‘love poetry’ as more than boy writes girl—but sex was always the underlying thrill, the secretly sexual/religious, thrilling trope in the days of priests and virgins.
In Shakespeare’s Sonnets, you had a lot of ‘man giving boy advice about love,’ and that’s what we get with this Sir John Suckling’s chestnut:
Why so pale and wan fond lover
Prithee why so pale?
Will, when looking well can’t move her,
Looking ill prevail?
Prithee why so pale?
Another reason for the great number of love poems back in the day arises as we contemplate these few lines: poetry was too effeminate a practice for men—unless poetry concerned itself, in an almost joking, or advice-giving manner, with love, and love’s effeminate traps and weaknesses. Men wanted to write poetry, and couldn’t, because it wasn’t manly, unless the slightly respectable trope of courting women (love) was made present.
Only a “pale” fop wrote verse—unless one were a clever knight (or aspiring playwright) who made it his business to trade in the trope from a knowing perspective.
Suckling is quite modern compared to Dante—in speaking of his reluctant Beatrice—or his friend’s Beatrice, in this case—Suckling ends his poem, “the devil take her.” Yikes!
Dante would be appalled.
Byron, a modern compared to Dante and Suckling, returns to a simpler, more purely romantic sensibility; the Romantics knew the Dante trope had “legs,” had staying power; the sophisticated, renaissance knight can be as clever as he wants, but love will always be love, and it hurts, and hell if it’s still not good for poetry.
Byron’s poem surveys the wreckage of the Dante trope—as he invests in it like crazy.
When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.The dew of the morning
Sank chill on my brow–
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame;
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.They name thee before me,
A knell in mine ear;
A shudder come o’er me–
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well–
Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.In secret we met–
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?–
With silence and tears.
Byron, the modern, almost seems like he’s mourning not so much the woman, with all his religious bells and sorrow, but the modern ruination of the old trope.
Suckling, writing in the 17th century, is having more fun.
Sir John wins.