{"id":424,"date":"2003-05-25T11:08:05","date_gmt":"2003-05-25T15:08:05","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=424"},"modified":"2006-08-09T13:17:32","modified_gmt":"2006-08-09T17:17:32","slug":"male-hetero-sex-poetry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/?p=424","title":{"rendered":"Male Hetero Sex Poetry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mike Snider<\/a>, via The Blowhards<\/a>, mourns the dearth of hetero male sex poetry. I got your hetero male sex poetry right here! Granted, I had to raid the 16th century to find it.<\/p>\n

All my senses, like beacons’ flame,
\nGave alarum to desire
\nTo take arms in Cynthia’s name,
\nAnd set all my thoughts on fire:
\nFury’s wit persuaded me,
\nHappy love was hazard’s heir,
\nCupid did best shoot and see
\nIn the night where smooth is fair;
\nUp I start believing well
\nTo see if Cynthia were awake;
\nWonders I saw, who can tell?
\nAnd thus unto myself I spake:
\nSweet god Cupid where am I,
\nThat by pale Diana’s light:
\nSuch rich beauties do espy,
\nAs harm our sense with delight?
\nAm I borne up to the skies?
\nSee where Jove and Venus shine,
\nShowing in her heavenly eyes
\nThat desire is divine:
\nLook where lies the Milken Way,
\nWay unto that dainty throne,
\nWhere while all the gods would play,
\nVulcan thinks to dwell alone.
\nI gave reins to this conceit,
\nHope went on the wheel of lust:
\nFancy’s scales are false of weight,
\nThoughts take thought that go of trust,
\nI stepp’d forth to touch the sky,
\nI a god by Cupid dreams,
\nCynthia who did naked lie,
\nRuns away like silver streams;
\nLeaving hollow banks behind,
\nWho can neither forward move,
\nNor if rivers be unkind,
\nTurn away or leave to love.
\nThere stand I, like Arctic Pole,
\nWhere Sol passeth o’er the line,
\nMourning my benighted soul,
\nWhich so loseth light divine.
\nThere stand I like men that preach
\nFrom the execution place,
\nAt their death content to teach
\nAll the world with their disgrace:
\nHe that lets his Cynthia lie,
\nNaked on a bed of play,
\nTo say prayers ere she die,
\nTeacheth time to run away:
\nLet no love-desiring heart,
\nIn the stars go seek his fate,
\nLove is only Nature’s art,
\nWonder hinders love and hate.
\n None can well behold with eyes,
\n But what underneath him lies.<\/em><\/p>\n

–Fulke Greville<\/p>\n

Greville<\/a> (Lord Brooke), incidentally, friend and biographer of Sidney and finance minister to Queen Elizabeth I, is the greatest English poet that you’ve never heard of. To clear up a few difficulties of diction and syntax: “Die” has the standard Elizabethan double meaning of sexual climax. “Lies,” in the last line, has both of its modern senses. “Thoughts take thought that go of trust” means that one’s own anxiety makes one’s thoughts unreliable; it is a gloss on the preceding line. <\/p>\n

This poem mocks the conventions of Elizabethan courtly love poetry and praises sex for its own sake in the most brutal terms. Greville gives us the dithering lover, absorbing himself in spiritual concerns, in three brilliant images: the river running away from the river-bank, the North Pole deserted by the sun (the “line” of “Where Sol passeth o’er the line” is the Equator), and the convict preaching from the gallows. The poem’s brutality derives from the fact that Greville, a Calvinist, believed in the absolute separation of body and soul, and allegiance to one, for him, entails rejection of the other. He later turned to the soul and wrote even better poems than this one, which is a post for another day. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mike Snider, via The Blowhards, mourns the dearth of hetero male sex poetry. I got your hetero male sex poetry right here! Granted, I had to raid the 16th century to find it. All my senses, like beacons’ flame, Gave alarum to desire To take arms in Cynthia’s name, And set all my thoughts on […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","category-2-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}