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People who signed up for free caramels, those are being shipped out today via priority mail. Each signed-up ~~victim~~ volunteer will receive approximately ten tastylicious caramels, said caramels individually hand-wrapped in wax paper by yours truly. (Also entirely made by me, but that wasn't the fiddly and annoying part of the process and thus not really worthy of mention.) When hand-wrapping candies such as caramels for gifting, twist the ends of the paper in the same direction the wrapping wraps so that the damn things don't come undone while they are sitting on your kitchen counter. Also, it's best to start the twisting part a bit out from the edge of the candy or the paper tears on the candy corners. Some of you will be receiving one or two somewhat imperfectly-wrapped caramels. Sorry about that. There was a learning curve.

This is another post about the works of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, a man now indelibly linked with plums in my mind. In this offering, I present for you his poetic efforts on impotence and premature ejaculation, which are a departure from the more usual run of pastoral poetry about droplets of dew on morning's just-opened flowers and the busy bees that slip twixt those lushly moistened petals... or perhaps not. (I'm suddenly reminded of a bizarre photomanip that I saw once, kind of fits with the topic at hand. Ah, google, how I love thee. Totally NSFW, people, totally. It's here.) At any rate, let's take a look at the rather less industrious bee, the slacker bee, the bee where you will and it won't.

For a guy pretty famous for giving the appearance that he fucked anything that moved, he wrote rather a lot about less-than-successful sex in his non-letters writings. (The actual personal letters are probably way more voluminious and somewhat less filthy, but they're dear enough that I'll have to wait on them until I get to receive our Dear Leader's *enormous* economic stimulus package. I'm, as they say, dripping with anticipation -- fairly reasoned speculation on that front suggests eight hundred dollars and a February arrival.) Anyway, back to our man Rochester and his writings. My personal theory is that he wrote so much about it because sexual dysfunction is funny when it's not about you and also because I reckon he had some experience with same due to all the drinking. A man gets too carried away with drinking and even the randiest prick quits working -- whiskey dick has been around since there's been liquor. It's literarily played for laughs in Macbeth, even: Lechery, sir, it (drink) provokes, and unprovokes; it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance... (If I have to tell you more than just Macbeth, you are not the readers I think you are.)

I think it would be a good idea if the collected works that I have sorted poetry by topic, but it does not. A sensible index would have a listing like, for example, "Impotence, poems about". This one does not so I've made extensive use of dog-eared corners instead.

Before we go there, however, a side note. As I rather thought might happen when first I ordered this slim yet surprisingly satisfying... volume, I've run across a bit of outmoded slang for naughty bits. Spreading the love around, I offer for you the Handy Guide to Restoration Era Porn Words... or perhaps we could call it "How to talk like the Earl of Rochester." (Never let it be said that this lj is bereft of useful information. Everybody needs to know how to talk like the Earl of Rochester, right? Filling unmet needs since 2004!)

Cock slang: The author likes prick a good deal (*snerk*) but also uses tarse, pintle, and assorted other terminology that we see less often these days, even if we read Hamilton's Elf Porn books. Cock and dick aren't there at all, surprisingly, but prick is definitely Rochester's go-to word for the dart o' love, the poker of passion, the sceptre of swiving. (I think we can all tell why the fuck I don't write romance novels, here. On a slightly unrelated note, I've lately been considering the methodology for my satiric research paper "A Longitudinal Study of Idealized Heteronormative Sexual Experiences, as Limned By Romance Novels, 1980-2008" and I've about got down what I want to do with that. I've been thinking about the satiric research paper for quite a while now, as evidenced by this post from the archives. Anyway, there may be a call for appropriate reading materials here in the not-horribly-distant future so that I can have source materials without spending any money. I feel that the satiric research paper is a genre whose time has totally come. For some idea of what a satiric research paper would read like, you can look at Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass, an early effort along similar lines but using the less rigorous structure of a lab report.)

Wanking slang: Oddly, not wanking. He uses frig for masturbation. It's both-gender, women frig and men frig. He also says masturbate but not as often.

Fucking slang: Fuck is a strong leader in the field. If, in some bizarre accident involving the space-time continuum, you wound up in 1670's England instead of in 1630's Germany, you could say fuck and absolutely nobody would have a bit of difficulty understanding you. Swive also makes a pretty good showing. Buggery, of course, is that special case of fucking that it remains today and is just as well understood then as it is now.

Cunt slang: Cunt, as I'm sure you know from your study of mammalian reproduction, never goes out of season. It was, happily, also just as popular in the 1670's as it is today. Use it freely -- he did. (I slay me.) He'll also use womb sometimes but cunt is both easier to rhyme and more offensive, thus clearly the better choice for his purposes.

Assorted other words that might be useful: cods -- probably your best bet is scrotum and testicles but that sounds so unlovely. It's the non-prick package. Best, perhaps to think of it as the aforementioned low-hanging fruit, eh? Bollocks is British and means the same then as it does now. Arse, again, sort of a British thing where we'd just say ass. He pronounces the "r" so that it rhymes (for example) with tarse. Flowers refers to menstruation, a matter of some import in a time when hygiene was more optional than it is now. (He's against fucking bloody snatch, wrote about it in By all love's soft, yet mighty powers, the which we will get to later in our study of his works.) The hygiene situation probably also accounts for the surprising (to me) paucity of oral in this corpus. (In my somewhat cursory reading, there's a back-of-the-hand mention of oral in In the Fields of Lincoln's Inn: "Coridon's aspiring tarse, Which to cunt had ne'er submitted, Wet with amorous kiss she fitted, To her less-frequented arse", but not much else. In the Fields of Lincoln's Inn is a poem about double penetration, not a poem about anal sex. Had to clear that up for you.)

There's also a whole vocabulary dealing with veneral disease, an occupational hazard for whores and something of a concern for those who fucked them. Merkin makes an appearance or three -- if you ever wondered what pubic wigs were all about, apparently they covered up those who'd gone pubicly bald by way of the pox.

That'll be enough to get you by, I should think. On to the poetry of when the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. (I've always, always, always read that phrase as quite literally being impotence. Probably this is just me.) One of the interesting things here is that we don't have real good provenance for the man's works. He didn't sign shit much and most of it was published after he was dead. There are manuscripts in his handwriting but, more often, there are unsigned, printed broadsheets. So, y'know, there's stuff that is definitely his and stuff that is only maybe-his, stuff that looks like it could be his, stuff that's in his style, and whatnot. It's not entirely straightforward. Along those lines, please look at the following three poems for literary craft. The first two are sort of questionable provenance, the third is more probably his.

On His Prick, a poem more-or-less by John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester. Could possibly be a poem by someone else, but if so, we haven't got any likely suspects.

Base mettle hanger by thy master's thigh,
Shame and disgrace to all prick heraldry, This is pretty solid, with layers. Plausible.
Hide thy despised head and do not dare
To peep, no not so much as to take the air
But through a buttonhole but pine and die
Confined within thy codpiece monastery. I think codpieces are hysterical. All the maturity of an eighth-grader, here.
The little childish boy that scarcely knows This doesn't flow well. There's a break between "little" and "childish".
The channel through which his water flows
Touched by mistress's most magnetic hand
His little needle presently will stand Again, flow is suspect.
And turn to her, but thou, in spite of that,
As oft cocks flopping like an old wife's hat. No. This is unskilled.
Did she not take you in her ivory hand?
Doubtless stroked thee yet you would not stand?
Did she not raise thy drooping head on high
As it lay nodding on her wanton thigh?
Did she not clasp her legs about thy back,
Her portal open? Prick, what didst thou lack? I, personally, adore the frustration evident in this line.
Henceforth stand stiff, regain thy credit lost,
Or I'll ne'er draw thee but against a post.

----------------

A Curse on His Pintle, also allegedly by the same aforementioned occasionally unerect nobility. One of the collectors of Rochester's work (Vieth) feels that this and the preceding poem are rather mediocre in their poetic craft and thus obviously could not have sprung from the ever-able pen of Rochester. To be fair, other of his work shines more brightly than this and he usually doesn't have the issues with meter or rhythm that we see here. I'm including them in spite of these doubts because, yo, impotence is funny when it isn't you.

Bless me ye stars! For sure some sad portent
Is threatened to me by this sad event The opening couplet is clumsy.
I had a girl, fair well-attired and sweet,
Merry and buxom, for embraces meet.
At my request she laid herself down low,
Her legs stretched wide, her cunt to me did show He writes better than this most of the time.
In full proportion, pretty mumping thing,
A companion and play-fellow for a king.
Then credit me, for true is my report,
It prettily mouthed and mewed to have me sport. This is better -- apt, evocative, and filthy. Good show!
But yet my base, my base unworthy prick
(Base I must term it, for so base a trick) Repetition isn't generally one of the tools in his box, weird to see it here.
Lay in despite of me as one stark dead.
I could by no means make him raise his head.
I kissed, I toyed, I clasped her cheeks and tail,
And fingered too, yet I could not prevail,
Yea, though she took it in her warm, moist hand
And crammed it in, dull dog, it would not stand. (The concluding couplet is well-enough writ to be his.)

For the last, we have a poem that isn't so much impotence as it is premature ejaculation. The provenance of this one is allegedly somewhat better. It's also hellishly long and I had to type this all in, so let's have a round of sympathy for my poor, tired fingers, here.

The Imperfect Enjoyment

Naked she lay, clasped in my longing arms,
I filled with love, and she all over charms,
Both equally inspired with eager fire,
Melting through kindness, flaming in desire:
With arms, legs, lips, close clinging to embrace,
She clips me to her breast, and sucks me to her face.
The nimble tongue (love's lesser lighning) played
Within my mouth, and to my thoughts conveyed
Swift orders, that I should prepare to throw
The all-dissolving thunderbold below.
My fluttering soul, sprung with the pointed kiss,
Hangs hnovering o'er her balmy brinks of bliss.
But whilst her busy hand would guide that part,
Which should convey my soul up to her heart,
In liquid raptures I dissolve all o'er,
Melt into sperm, and spend at every pore:
A touch from any part of her had done't,
Her hand, her foot, her very look's a cunt.
Smiling, she chides in a kind murmuring noise,
And from her body wipes the clammy joys;
When with a thousand kisses, wand'ring o'er
My panting bosom, and 'Is there then no more?'
She cries. 'All this to love and rapture's due;
Must we not pay a debt to pleasure too?'
But I, the most forlorn, lost man alive,
To show my wished obedience vainly strive.
I sigh, alas, and kiss, but cannot swive.
Eager desires confound my first intent,
Succeeding shame does more success prevent.
And rage, at last, confirms me impotent.
Even her fair hand, which might bid heat return
To frozen age, and make cold hermits burn,
Applied to my dead cinder, warms no more,
Than fire to ashes could past flames restore,
Trembling, confused, limber, dry,
A wishing, weak, unmoving lump I lie.
This dart of love, whose piercing point oft tried
With virgin blood, ten thousand maids has dyeed;
Which Nature still directed with such art,
That it through every cunt reached every heart.
Stiffly resolved, 'Twould carelessly invade
Woman or man, nor aught its fury strayed,
Where'er it pierced, a cunt it found, or made.
Now languid lies, in this unhappy hour,
Shrunk up, and sapless, like a withered flower.
Thou treacherous, base deserter of my flame,
False to my passion, fatal to my fame,
Through what mistaken magic does thou prove
So true to lewdness, so untrue to love?
What oyster, cinder, beggar, common whore,
Didst thou ere fail in all thy life before?
When vice, disease, and scandal lead the way,
With what officious haste dost thou obey?
Like a rude roaring hector, in the streets,
That scuffles, cuffs, and ruffles all he meets;
But if his king and country claim his aid,
The rakehell villian shrinks, and hides his head:
Even so thy brutal valor is displayed;
Breaks every stew, does each small whore invade,
But when great Love the onset does command,
Base recreant to thy prince, thou darest not stand.
Worst part of me, and henceforth hated most,
Through all the town : a common fucking-post,
On whom each whore relieves her tingling cunt,
As hogs on goats do rub themselves and grunt
May'st thou to ravenous cankers be a prey,
Or in consuming weepings waste away.
May strangury and stone thy days attend,
May'st thou ne'er piss, who did refuse to spend,
When all my joys did on false thee depend.
And may ten thousand abler pricks agree
To do the wronged Corinna right for thee.

-----------------------------------------------------------

This last is written a cut above the first two. The meter is better. The imagery is worlds better. The diction is higher. It's a higher-class poem in happy ten-syllable lines that make (very) nicely rhymed couplets. (The first two are also ten syllable lines in rhymed couplets but they don't *feel* the same, do they?) The last... it reminds me of Alexander Pope, for fuck's sake, but more porny of course. Alexander Pope didn't write about fucking.