I distinctly recall first learning of Richard Lovelace’s poetry in Captain Blood: His Odyssey by Rafael Sabatini (“Stone walls do not a prison make, // Nor iron bars a cage…”), and three years later spending a fair amount of time on the Cavalier Poets as taught at Mt. Miguel High School, San Diego, by the wonderful Mrs. Louise Simpson, easily the finest and my favorite of several outstanding English teachers I’ve had.

What barely post-pubescent adolescent male doesn’t, or at least some of us didn’t decades ago, wish for a moment he could write lines as Cavalier Poet Robert Herrick did–“That brave vibration each way free, // O how that glittering taketh me!” in “Upon Julia’s Clothes”? Yes, it’s surely classified as an objectifying poem today but I didn’t recognize this at the age of seventeen, I simply found such brave vibration quite attractive. I still do. Lovelace’s poems I regarded at the time, and may still, as purely of my definition of the romantic ideal–of the combining of the physical and metaphysical, second only to the poems of John Donne.

Richard Lovelace (1618 – 1657) was an English cavalier, poet, and soldier. At sixteen he wrote The Scholars, a comedy performed at Whitefriars. The son of a soldier who died in battle when the poet-to-be was nine years old, Lovelace became a soldier too. A devout follower of the Royalist cause, he worked loyally with both pen and sword to sustain the reign of King Charles I. The young poet fought as an ensign against Covenanting rebels in Scotland in 1639, and in 1642 he was imprisoned by Parliament after presenting it with the “Kentish” petition for restoring the rights of the king. During his confinement he wrote what might be his most finest poem, “To Althea, from Prison.” Its most famous line is quoted above.

The terms of Lovelace’s parole and bail prevented him from engaging in the first fighting of the Civil War and also ran him into debt. He joined King Charles I at Oxford in 1645, and after the city’s surrender he went formed a regiment and went abroad as its colonel. In 1646 he was wounded in French service during the siege of Spanish-held Dunkirk. In 1649, after a delay caused by a second imprisonment upon his return to England in 1648, he published a collection of poems, Lucasta, and a decade later his brother published a posthumous edition of his poems. It is generally held that Lucasta was Lucy Sacheverell, who married another upon a false report of Lovelace’s death caused by his wound at Dunkirk. Lovelace died depressed and in poverty, surely due in part to the beheading of his beloved king, and perhaps the loss of his love as well.

Other than the poems below, I could find nothing on his experiences as a fencer, although given his social standing and military career, he would doubtless have been instructed in fencing and probably experienced, at least on the battlefield (a far more dangerous arena than the field of honor), in the swordplay of deadly combat. His poem, “The Duell,” which I include at the end, clearly proves his familiarity with the process of the duel and technique of swordplay.

I’ve gone back and forth over the years, as I have with much poetry and fiction, on whether I agree or disagree with Lovelace’s apparent worldview in his poems, compared as it were with my own life experiences. Stone walls do and do not a prison make, and my senses of honor and love simultaneously agree and disagree with Lovelace’s: “I could not love thee (Dear) so much, // Lov’d I not Honour more.” I thought often on these and similar lines during my naval service, attempting to reconcile them with my reality. Honor, I found, is a concept too often distorted, abused, and even in its purest sense, of standing up for justice and equality, too often entirely absent. And some of those I’ve often heard prate about their personal honor had none at all. I balance this internal conflict by finding that honor, like love, is shaped by the vessel.

Further, I’m no monarchist, much less a pining one. Politically I’m anti-authoritarian rule, including anti-monarchy, unlike Lovelace who was willing to suffer in prison for his loyalty to his king. I’m even suspicious of the lesser sort of modern constitutional monarchs. Democracy, as they say, is the worst form of government, except of course for all the others.

At best it’s little more than recreational speculation, no matter how intelligent, to predict how one of us today might have believed and behaved in centuries past, but in the seventeenth century I’d hope to find myself a reasonable progressive, who, while grudgingly, even sadly, accepting the popular violent overthrow of an unjust king who unlawfully usurped his parliament to rule without it, would yet try to prevent the excesses the act might lead to, particularly the replacement of a king-in-fact with a king-de-facto–of one tyranny with another. Too often rebellion or revolution via civil war against tyranny leads not to political revolution but to mere status quo–more tyranny–under a different name. And I’ve never been a fan of Puritans or any extremists of faith or flag any more than I have of monarchs and autocrats no matter their politics.

Likewise, perhaps I’d have been a Whig who would have encouraged the arrival of William and Mary to take the English throne in order to strengthen Parliament, but would not have supported the Monmouth adventure three years prior, even quoting Horace as Rafael Sabatini’s Dr. Peter Blood did: “Quo, quo, scelesti, ruitis?” I would have had to imagine true democracy, given the era. Or join the buccaneers, making the trade-off of accepting a local democracy in return for the government-encouraged predation on others, often innocent Spaniards.

In today’s political landscape, I find myself a left-center independent who stands against all attempts to undermine American Democracy and replace it with autocracy. Our wannabe autocrat is mostly quiet for the moment, but his enablers high and low, lacking in both honor and respect for democracy, have yet to admit defeat. The eternal fight for justice and equality, of trying destroy the ancient, ugly, ruthless ideology of “might as right” coupled to “those who are different are by definition enemies,” goes on.

But none of the forgoing has stopped me from reading and enjoying Richard Lovelace’s poetry to this day, even if I don’t entirely agree with it on all points. I’d find little to read, not to mention few friends, were I to demand agreement in all areas.

Last, as a swordsman I’m delighted to read any poetry associated in any way with swordplay. Art and arms once went hand-in-hand, letters and arms in particular, and a fair number of fencers, male and female, have been adept with both pen and sword. This seems less so today, unfortunately, perhaps due these days to the heavy emphasis on fencing as a sport rather than as a practice or accomplishment as part of a broad education in the humanities.

But no matter. On to the poem!

First, the original version in Pallas Armata: The Gentlemen’s Armorie. This fencing book ostensibly includes a treatise on rapier play, but it’s really an early treatise on an incipient new school of fence, French-based, that would be developed in depth over the next few decades. The treatise was written just beyond the end of the rapier era in France, England, and other, but not all, countries as shorter, lighter “transitional” (a modern term) thrusting swords, and an associated transitional technique that retained some of the old, came to be. Already the incipient new swordplay, based as it was on the new fashion in swords, was on display in the form of an emphasis on “single rapier” rather than on rapier and parrying dagger, and with an emphasis on some two tempo techniques (the beat-thrust, for example) in addition to the common single tempo techniques that made up much of rapier technique. Although the author “G. A.” makes much use of Italian terms–stringere/stringered, cavere/cavering, for example–his technique appears to be largely French-derived, noting of course that all schools of fence steal from each other, and likewise also develop similar techniques via parallel evolution.

The book also includes instruction on the “sword”–the broadsword and backsword, that is. The straight-bladed cutting sword, the backsword in particular, was in fact the traditional English sword and far more useful on a battlefield than the rapier which was really more of a gentleman’s badge of status and walking or “street sword,” as its successor the smallsword soon would be as well.

The dedicatory poems, all by friends associated with Oxford, Cambridge, or Gray’s Inn (one of the four Inns of Court for the care and feeding of lawyers and the even more annoying species, lawyers-to-be), are inscribed to the author, “G. A.,” whom historian of the sword and sword masters J. D. Aylward identifies as most likely Lovelace’s friend Gideon Ashwell.

I’m going to take a pass on writing anything remotely resembling literary criticism in regard to the poem other than what I’ve already done above. These days, in reviews or criticisms you’re likely to learn far more about the critic than the writer or their writing. Perhaps it’s always been this way, but amplified now by the Internet and various associated social media. I know too well how difficult it is to write and publish anything these days, at least via a traditional press, so I tend to give most writers a pass, at least on their writing itself (their ideas may still be fair game), and ignore their critics. And for that matter, mine as well.

So, finally (you say), the poem:

To the Reader.

Harke, Reader, would’st be learn’d ith’ Warres,
A Captaine in a gowne?
Strike a league with Bookes and Starres,
And weave of both the Crowne?

Would’st be a Wonder? Such a one
As would winne with a Looke?
A Schollar in a Garrison?
And conquer by the Booke?

Take then this Mathematick Shield,
And henceforth by its Rules,
Be able to dispute ith Field,
And combate in the Schooles.

Whil’st peacefull Learning once agen
And th’ Souldier do concorde,
As that he fights now with her Penne,
And she writes with his Sword.

RICH LOVELACE
A. Glouces. Oxon.

As J. D. Aylward notes, in spite of Lovelace’s mention of mathematics, Pallas Armata’s instructions actually avoid the mathematical–i.e. geometrical–convolutions of some earlier French and current Spanish (destreza verdadera) forms of rapier swordplay. Although there is nothing revealing about swordplay per se in the poem, it does make an excellent comparison of the overlap between arms and letters (provided, of course, that one actually applies one to the other). Lovelace’s “The Duell,” an allegory on a combat with love, has more references to the technique and process of swordplay and dueling than the poem above in fact.

The poem, with minor but notable revisions, was reprinted in 1649 in Lucasta by Richard Lovelace, but oddly not in the posthumous 1659 edition:

To my truly valiant, learned Friend, who in his
          booke resolv’d the Art Gladiatory
                   into the Mathematick’s.

            I
HEARKE, reader! wilt be learn’d ith’ warres?
A Gen’rall in a gowne?
Strike a league with Arts and Scarres,
And snatch from each a Crowne?

            II
Wouldst be a wonder? Such a one,
As should win with a Looke?
A Bishop in a Garison,
And Conquer by the Booke?

            III
Take then this Mathematick shield,
And henceforth by its rules
Be able to dispute ith’ field,
And Combate in the Schooles.

            IV
Whilst peaceful Learning once againe
And the Souldier so concord,
As that he fights now with her Penne,
And she writes with his Sword.

Poetry of the sword is difficult to find, but thankfully not poetry by those who practice the sword. The romance of the sword itself –or perhaps the romantic notions that lead one to the sword, among other passions–has long inspired poetry and prose, not to mention film. May it yet continue to do so.

Finally, because it alludes to swordplay and its traditions, not to mention to the Spanish novel Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes, here is Lovelace’s poem, “The Duell,” an allegory. Note the language of the duel and swordplay: affront, challeng’d, the choyce of equal lengths and points, pass, falsify, true distance!

I.
Love drunk, the other day, knockt at my brest,
But I, alas! was not within.
My man, my ear, told me he came t’ attest,
That without cause h’d boxed him,
And battered the windows of mine eyes,
And took my heart for one of’s nunneries.

II.
I wondred at the outrage safe return’d,
And stormed at the base affront;
And by a friend of mine, bold faith, that burn’d,
I called him to a strict accompt.
He said that, by the law, the challeng’d might
Take the advantage both of arms and fight.

III.
Two darts of equal length and points he sent,
And nobly gave the choyce to me,
Which I not weigh’d, young and indifferent,
Now full of nought but victorie.
So we both met in one of’s mother’s groves,
The time, at the first murm’ring of her doves.

IV.
I stript myself naked all o’re, as he:
For so I was best arm’d, when bare.
His first pass did my liver rase: yet I
Made home a falsify too neer:
For when my arm to its true distance came,
I nothing touch’d but a fantastick flame.

V.
This, this is love we daily quarrel so,
An idle Don-Quichoterie:
We whip our selves with our own twisted wo,
And wound the ayre for a fly.
The only way t’ undo this enemy
Is to laugh at the boy, and he will cry.

Plenty of collections of Lovelace’s poems are available, particularly in reasonably priced used or antiquarian editions. My favorite, and perhaps most complete, is Lucasta: The Poems of Richard Lovelace, edited by William Carew Hazlitt, 1864 or 1897 (and later) editions. There are numerous small editions of Lovelace’s most famous poems, and Scolar Press (1972) has a facsimile reprint of the original 1649 edition.

Copyright Benerson Little 2021. First posted March 2, 2021. Last modified March 10, 2021.