"I Can't Get No Satisfaction" poems
 

Ralph's nostalgic piece about the love poems of yesteryear made me think of how many so-called love poems are actually about sexual frustration.

A common theme is the older lover, still fixated on the attractions of the young and the beautiful, in vain. (SPOILER ALERT: the young and the beautiful ALSO tend to prefer the attractions of the young and the beautiful. Who knew?)

Deleted all of that.

It couldn't possibly go anywhere but badly.

This Ransom poem has been a longtime favorite of mine. While the scenario of a lecherous old man propositioning a beautiful young woman is suggested at the surface level of the poem, I see the scene as largely emblematic.

The two characters (the old man and the young lady) seem to represented very different, even opposite, attitudes or philosophical outlooks about life and love and the reality of things. The old man seems to be the voice of death, and he points out that decline, decay, and ruined expectations are laws of nature. The young lady, on the other hand, represents romantic dreams, idealized notions about love and life.

Richard

How about Dante's Divine Comedy? It seems to fit the bill, minus the sexual frustration. His love for Beatrice was certainly (per the Vita nuova) unrequited.

I like that more abstract interpretation, Richard.

On a literal level, I don't actually see the man as "old," despite his self-deprecating reference as such, and I don't see him as creepily, inappropriately lecherous, either.

But he's definitely in love with a romantic ideal, not a person. As is the young woman, too, passively "waiting/ until my true love comes, and then we kiss." She may or may not have a particular person in mind, but either way her "true love" seems secondary to her own self-image as a young, beautiful leading lady.

When I was eighteen, a middle-aged man became obsessed with me, or rather with what a man's ability to "win" a young, slim, large-busted blonde represents in our culture; and my boyfriend at the time also seemed obsessed with that same idea of me, rather than with who I really was. Both guys claimed to love me intensely, while demonstrating ZERO interest in my thoughts and feelings and goals and desires. And they were both very big on being seen monopolizing my attention in public. I was a symbol to be flaunted before other men. (In fact, they often seemed to care far more about what random other men might be thinking than what I, their supposed beloved, actually thought.)

At least our y=2x age difference eventually helped the older guy realize how delusional it was to claim to love someone that he didn't even bother to regard as an autonomous, thinking, feeling human being. My boyfriend (y=x+5) never figured that out.

I think the sonnet does a great job of showing that these two characters inhabit separate universes.

Certainly, some old geezer panting beneath a young girl's window doesn't paint a very pretty picture, does it? Obviously, in that case - though I agree with Richard that the poem has deeper meaning - the old coot is acting like a creep, though I don't know if I'd consider his behavior predatorial. Predators seek out unwilling victims, while this speaker is seeking consent, though in his wheezy, creepy way.

And I would think anyone with a brain larger than a pea realizes that the young and beautiful prefer the attractions of the young and beautiful?

I think, Julie, that you're failing to make a crucial distinction between love and sexual appetite. If we're going to talk about love poems, then I assume we mean poems written in passion, about a feeling of love for the beloved? Being in love with someone is far more than simply desiring physical intimacy with them. When you love someone, everything about them is rewarding. Their very presence is rewarding, and being apart from them is painful: not because you can't have sex with them, but because their absence is painful. Of course you know this. And I think anyone who posts on this BB knows that. But it bears mentioning.

My reading has been fairly extensive when it comes to poetry, and I can't think of a great deal of love poetry by someone much older seeking a much younger lover, at least not off the top of my head, though no doubt I could find it if I were to look for it.

Think of the Elizabethans, just as an example, when amorous love poetry was so common and ubiquitous: Shakespeare, Sidney, Marlowe, and dozens of others. Sidney wrote one of the greatest, and most passionate, sonnet sequences in English, and he died at 31. Not exactly some pathetic old codger with a case of the hots.

I'll cite one of my favorite poems by Sidney, which I've cited elsewhere:

Astrophel and Stella

LIV

Because I breathe not love to every one,
Nor do not use set colours for to wear,
Nor nourish special locks of vowèd hair,
Nor give each speech a full point of a groan,
The courtly nymphs, acquainted with the moan
Of them which in their lips Love's standard bear,
"What, he!" say they of me; "now I dare swear
He cannot love; no, no, let him alone."
And think so still, so Stella know my mind!
Profess, indeed, I do not Cupid's art;
But you, fair maids, at length this true shall find,
That his right badge is worn but in the heart.
Dumb swans, not chattering pies, do lovers prove;
They love indeed who quake to say they love.

***

It was also fashionable, not only among the English poets, but those of other nationalities, to give the beloved a different name, and a very common theme is the author or narrator keeping his/her feelings a secret, for fear of giving offense. This, however, especially nowadays, is viewed as being creepy also. And that's the thing that bothers me.

I don't give a fig if people call out some fool for stalking someone, or for being overly obsessed or fixated on another person - and they especially deserve to be called out if they are acting on their obsession and becoming a nuisance. What I object to is calling someone creepy, or predatorial, simply for having unreturned feelings for another person and expressing that pain in some way, be it in music or poetry, or some other art.

And yes, there is a lot of sexual frustration in the world, but that's a part of being human, more so in some people than in others. We can't all be outgoing, socially apt individuals. Some of us are painfully shy and socially inept, and we're not out to hurt anyone. Well, not all of us, and probably only a relative few of these types are actually a threat to others. If anything, we make a fetish of suffering, and make art out of it - which comes across to others as wrongheaded, and even creepy. I've written only a small handful of poems about my feelings of unrequited love (and posted one here, which went over well), because of the very real concern I have when it comes to expressing those feelings in a way that won't come across as creepy. By and large, I've kept my sexual feelings to myself as a poet, though I've funneled a good deal of my pain into my song lyrics and fiction - and various places online.

Good or bad art, IMO, depends on the nature of the expression of those feelings of frustration and longing for intimacy. It requires delicacy and care, and good taste. Some people got it, some don't.

We cross-posted, Julie.

I can see that you have very justified feelings due to those experiences. Though at the same time, I don't have much experience being the object of someone else's desires. I also don't know what it's like to be a woman or to be regarded as a possession, or some kind of trophy-mate.

As far as I know, only two women have ever loved me (my ex-wife confessed to me that she never loved me). The first was a much older woman, who treated me very well, and whom I treated with great devotion; the other is an old friend I now talk with on Facebook. I never knew that she was in love with me when we were younger. I regret not noticing those feelings, which she never expressed. I don't return the attraction, or the strong sexual feelings, but I was not offended in the least when she unloaded all of this on me. In fact, being that I haven't had sex in 12 years, it was rather flattering, and gave me a new sense of self-worth. (I've only been with 2 women in my whole life, that older woman I mentioned, and my ex-wife, as it happens.)

I will say that being treated as an object for someone's pleasure would never be pleasing to me, I don't care if she was the greatest beauty in the world. I would always expect to be treated with respect and decency.

Definitions of love vary widely. The Greeks tried to narrow things down with their four different words for four different kinds of love--C.S. Lewis wrote about this. But even from a classical perspective, the difference between love and lust seems to be in the eye of the beholder.

It seems clear to me that we don't have much choice over whom or what we find sexually attractive. (Cupid's carelessness or naughtiness with his arrows, from which not even the king of the gods was immune, is an obvious classical metaphor for this.) The best we can manage is some level of conscious control over whether we will pursue what attracts us, and if so, how.

The subconscious still has an unruly will of its own, though. Witness Chip Livingston's excruciatingly awkward "Nocturnal Admissions".

I like how Bill Knott discusses a lack of sexual chemistry in "The Consolations of Sociobiology":

I have been wracking my brains, shuffling through books, looking for what I mean when I refer to the expression of a sacred, even divine love, which is not just lust. Every animal feels lust, the hardwired imperative to procreate, the itch. That is not what I refer to when I refer to passionate love poems or poetry. It's manifestly evident that some people don't give a tinker's damn about love when it comes to getting their rocks off. As for those people: fine, whatever floats your boat. Have a blast.

But there are also people who see a necessary co-dependence between love and the urge for physical, sexual intimacy. Like myself. I don't go after one-nite-stands, and I would never be with a prostitute. It's all or nuthin' for me. And I know from having many acquaintances that I'm not the only person who feels this way.

Anyway, finally, this beautiful poem popped into my arena of consciousness, and yes, it's about as delicate, as careful, and dare I say, as gentlemanly a way to express devotional love that I can currently bring to mind:

***

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

— William Butler Yeats

I don't know what to make of the Bill Knott poem. I don't quite grasp it. But it seems intensely-felt.

I have not clicked the Lewis or the Livingston links yet, but I will tomorrow.

The Yeats is lovely, Bill.

Below, a forty-seven-year-old narrator grieves that the woman he loves isn't able to fall in love with a man with "My hundred of gray hairs...My mountain belly and my rocky face," despite his having poured out his heart and soul to her in poetry.

It's poignant, but I suspect that the real problem here is the man's own apparent inability to fall in love with an available woman his own age, with a similarly time-worn body, who would presumably be more receptive to his poetic charms.


My Picture Left in Scotland
by Ben Jonson

I now think Love is rather deaf than blind,
For else it could not be
That she,
Whom I adore so much, should so slight me
And cast my love behind.
I'm sure my language to her was as sweet,
And every close did meet
In sentence of as subtle feet,
As hath the youngest He
That sits in shadow of Apollo's tree.

O, but my conscious fears,
That fly my thoughts between,
Tell me that she hath seen
My hundred of gray hairs,
Told seven and forty years
Read so much waste, as she cannot embrace
My mountain belly and my rocky face;
And all these through her eyes have stopp'd her ears.


A few poets celebrate the joys of longstanding, stable relationships--I recently ran across a charming one in Spanish that I should probably try to translate at some point--but the mood swings of the initial infatuation definitely make more dramatic material for a poet to work with. Which is probably why Ronsard kept moving on to new mistresses so often--Pregnancy has now changed those perfect, perky little tits I used to write sonnets about, so it's time again to turn my attention to another teenaged muse!

Longstanding, stable relationships mainly get poeticized, if they are at all, only in retrospect, when the spouse is no longer around to appreciate the resulting poem. This may be due in part to the widespread misconception that the whole point of getting married is to be able to take one's partner for granted, and dispense with the bother of having to woo her (or him) anymore.

Bill, regarding your question about types of love in Post 9, could they be caritas and cupiditas? Augustine talks about them: The carnal will he called cupiditas, or cupidity, and the spiritual will he called caritas, which is the Latin translation of the Christian term, agapé, which means "selfless love." But caritas is more than selfless love; it is the will to be like God and to be united with God. It is, in simple terms, the will to God, while cupidity is the will to flesh (think Cupid and his little darts).

Julie,

I take your point about the effervescence and zing of ‘first love’ or infatuation as compared to the (mellower? deeper? richer?) vintage of domesticity … and you are probably right that that is one reason why poets seem more often to write about the former than the latter. But I also remembered the writings of Kierkegaard, that poet among philosophers, specifically the letters of Judge William to the aesthete, the seducer. I opened up the book (Either/Or, volume II) to peruse it, and as luck would have it, my eyes alighted on this:

This much we have proved: that conjugal love … is not only quite as beautiful as first love but far more so, because it contains in its immediacy a unity of more opposites. It is, therefore, not true that marriage is a highly respectable estate but a tiresome one, while love is poetry. No, marriage is properly the poetical thing.

(I’ve written a few poems on the beauty of enduring love; I should write better ones.)

I have to post this poem by Yeats because it expresses, it seems to me, a love that goes beyond the sensual or ‘first love’ stage as well as the ache of frustration, so wondrously phrased:


When You Are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

-- WB Yeats

Did Ronsard actually say that, Julie, or are you paraphrasing his sentiments? I've not read the poet, so I don't know. But if he actually said that: Pregnancy has now changed those perfect, perky little tits I used to write sonnets about, so it's time again to turn my attention to another teenaged muse! - how appalling. My ex-wife was never more attractive to me than well after she's had our kids, when her breasts were far from "perky." Besides, one doesn't love a woman for her breasts! I used to tell my ex: "I don't love you because you have breasts, I love your breasts because they're yours." (Or, insert any body part for 'breasts".)

I'm certainly not denying that there are men with so low an opinion of women, I'm just not interested in that kind of person, nor their poetry.

The Jonson poem does seem to be exactly how you describe it. I'm sure there are many more poems of that nature, but they haven't impressed me nor stuck with me, which is why I can't recall any similar to Jonson's.

Ralph,

I think what I'm talking about is neither, since I'm referring to the romantic love of one person for another: not selfless (I'm not sure that anyone can be truly selfless, nor do I think it would be healthy), and not purely sexual. It's not an either/or kind of thing.

The subject of healthy, harmless romantic love is really not that complex (though it can be, just like any other aspect of being human), and the need to psychoanalyze people (or poets) for having natural feelings and emotions is what I find worrisome, not to mention a bit baffling, about this whole discussion. I'm glad there's this thread, however, and I'd rather hoped more Spherians would offer their opinions, since it's been something of a hot topic lately on the boards.

I'll have more to say later, after work. I'm on my break at the moment.

It seems worth remembering that Yeats's "pilgrim soul" sonnet is in fact a paraphrase of Ronsard, with a twist:

"Quand vous serez bien vieille

Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, à la chandelle,
Assise auprès du feu, dévidant et filant,
Direz, chantant mes vers, en vous émerveillant :
Ronsard me célébrait du temps que j’étais belle.

Lors, vous n’aurez servante oyant telle nouvelle,
Déjà sous le labeur à demi sommeillant,
Qui au bruit de mon nom ne s’aille réveillant,
Bénissant votre nom de louange immortelle.

Je serai sous la terre et fantôme sans os :
Par les ombres myrteux je prendrai mon repos :
Vous serez au foyer une vieille accroupie,

Regrettant mon amour et votre fier dédain.
Vivez, si m’en croyez, n’attendez à demain :
Cueillez dès aujourd’hui les roses de la vie."

Pierre de Ronsard, Sonnets pour Hélène, 1578

John -- worth knowing, not remembering, as I did not know it!

I have to say, I like what Yeats did with it.

Thanks!

Hi Michael,

I prefer the Yeats too (though I see it's no sonnet, my bad).
Yeats is routinely great IMO.

Bill, I'm probably being unfair to Ronsard.

Ronsard certainly dedicated love poems to a long series of teenaged women, for some of whom we have historical details. But we know that at least some of these poems were commissioned in praise of other men's mistresses; and Ronsard's relationships with the others may have been mostly literary, modeled in part on Petrarch's ever-so-chaste yet ever-so-obsessive worship of his Laura, and in part on poetic traditions like the blazon and effictio (which Shakespeare mocks in his Sonnet 130; these systematically catalogued and praised each part of a beautiful woman's anatomy, apparently without implying that the poet had done actual primary research into the particulars; they're far too restrained to be exercises in bawdiness, IMO).

Yes, Ronsard fetishizes very young women's barely-budding breasts in several poems, but this may simply be his imagination at work, supplemented heavily with borrowings from tradition.

Ronsard couldn't marry Cassandre Salviati--an Italian who was 15 when he met her at age 21 at a court ball--because he had taken minor orders, although he was never ordained a priest; she married someone else the next year. He continued to dedicate poems to her, or to the idea of her. And he continued to receive ecclesiastical posts for the rest of his life, despite his well-known side job churning out erotic poetry.

Some scholars feel that Ronsard's relationship with Marie Dupin, also 15 years old when they met, may not have been strictly platonic. However, his relationship with Hélène de Surgères, who was a teenager when Ronsard was 45 years old (and who is the addressee of the sonnet John quoted above), is widely regarded as nothing more than literary.

The other dedicatees of his love poems include Marguerite, Jeanne, Madeleine, Rose, Sinope, Ginèvre, and Isabeau. We know that there was more than one Marie, but one was a duke's mistress, and her poem of praise was commissioned. Some of these names may have been pseudonyms, following the classical tradition, and some may have been entirely fictional constructs, created as excuses to write love poems. We don't know.

In sum, there's not enough solid evidence to support my earlier statement about Ronsard, which I retract.

I think several of us have taken stabs at translating the Ronsard sonnet above. I'll post mine if others will post theirs. (I've also translated his sonnet about the flea enjoying access to somebody's breasts--Cassandre's, I think.)

Hi Julie,

I'm no expert on Ronsard, but your mention of Ronsard's commissioned poem in praise of Marie got me thinking of my favorite sonnet of his, which I like not least because it passed from being a touchstone for authenticity, for the C19th, to being a great example in the C20th of commissioned sentiment. Is it this Marie sonnet you were referring to?

"Comme on voit sur la branche

Comme on voit sur la branche au mois de mai la rose,
En sa belle jeunesse, en sa première fleur,
Rendre le ciel jaloux de sa vive couleur,
Quand l’Aube de ses pleurs au point du jour l’arrose;

La grâce dans sa feuille, et l’amour se repose,
Embaumant les jardins et les arbres d’odeur;
Mais battue, ou de pluie, ou d’excessive ardeur,
Languissante elle meurt, feuille à feuille déclose.

Ainsi en ta première et jeune nouveauté,
Quand la terre et le ciel honoraient ta beauté,
La Parque t’a tuée, et cendres tu reposes.

Pour obsèques reçois mes larmes et mes pleurs,
Ce vase plein de lait, ce panier plein de fleurs,
Afin que vif et mort, ton corps ne soit que roses."

Pierre de Ronsard, Amours, 1560

I have a random online translation to hand:

"On The Death of Marie

Just as one sees, on its stem in the month of May, the rose
In its lovely youth, in its first flower
Render the sky jealous of its vivid colour,
As at dawn Aurora moistens it with dew:
Grace and love within its petals repose,
Suffusing the gardens and the trees with fragrance:
Yet, battered by rain, or excessive heat of the sun,
Languishing, it dies, petal by petal unfolding:
Thus, in your first youth and freshness,
When the earth and the heavens honour your beauty
The Fates have borne you away, and in ashes you repose,
For obsequy accept my tears and weeping,
This vase filled with milk, this basket full of flowers,
That in life, and death, your body may never be without roses."

(English translation by William Hawley). NB this is pretty literal, but honoraient for some reason is rendered honour not honoured.

Oh - it seems worth noting here that these two Ronsard sonnets were learned by heart by generations of French schoolchildren, all across France. Make of it what you will, folks!

A Virginal

No, no! Go from me. I have left her lately.
I will not spoil my sheath with lesser brightness,
For my surrounding air hath a new lightness;
Slight are her arms, yet they have bound me straitly
And left me cloaked as with a gauze of æther;
As with sweet leaves; as with subtle clearness.
Oh, I have picked up magic in her nearness
To sheathe me half in half the things that sheathe her.
No, no! Go from me. I have still the flavour,
Soft as spring wind that’s come from birchen bowers.
Green come the shoots, aye April in the branches,
As winter’s wound with her sleight hand she staunches,
Hath of the trees a likeness of the savour:
As white their bark, so white this lady’s hours.

— Ezra Pound

***

I thought of this poem while at work, since it's one I always thought was superb, at least for its technique and beauty of language, albeit it's from his early period where he was writing in a very outmoded, high style.

There are many interpretations of this sonnet, all kinds of analysis available to read with a few clicks. I read several, and the one that I decided to share is from a blog whose author is no-one I know or have heard of. Their first name is Ashok (male or female? No idea), and they are (or were at the time of writing this I assume) a "graduate student in political science". The author of the following commentary admits to being "creeped out" by this poem, and offers what I think is accurate in some ways - and similar to other interpretations - but also over the top in suggesting that the subject of the poem is dying. I didn't see this interpretation in any other commentary on the poem. Not saying it's not out there, just didn't read it.

Here's the commentary (I would just link to it but I just noticed only last night the big warning about putting links in this forum. I assume this warning is still in effect, though it was put there in 2011? I've gone through my many posts here and deleted a whole slew of links. Sorry, Boss!):

I hate to say it, but this only increases my often-voiced concerns about just what goes on in college and university classrooms.

I will admit, the poem can be seen as rather sexist, if one want to see it that way: N seems, at least to my understanding of the poem, to have just come from a sexual rendezvous with a young woman, a virgin, or "virginal" it would seem, and is telling another person - I agree that it could be a woman, but it could be anyone - to stay clear because he doesn't want his experience spoiled by contact with someone less "pure". The above commentator seems to think N has not had sex with this young woman, but it seems to me that the mention of his "sheath" in L2 is pretty clear. Perhaps not.

This poem appeared in 1912, and may have been written earlier, but the oldest Pound could have been when he wrote the poem is 27. And there is no mention of how old the subject is. And he refers to her as a "lady", not a girl.

No matter what the details, the poem is devotional, and is clearly worshipful of this "lady". But then again, many readers are creeped out by it. Pound's silly political views certainly don't help.

***

As for Ronsard, Julie - from what you've told me, I don't think you need to retract your statement at all. In fact, it seems to be an apt summing up of the man's attitude towards women. And he seems to have obviously had a rather unsavory fetish for young women. But, like I said, I haven't read him, and know zilch about him. And he came from a different world.

If he had been born in certain parts of Africa, or some other region where human female breasts are not obsessed over by males, he wouldn't have been fascinated by breasts at all, I don't suppose. ?

Edited in: Hey, Julie, I clicked on the Lewis link, then clicked another, and discovered that I'm heterosocial. Cool! A new label for me:

Hi Bill,

I suspect Pound is punning on the Latin for sheath.
My best friend when I was about seven was named Ashok, it's a male name.

John

Oh - Ashok was also a Maurya emperor, who made Buddhism his state religion. He ruled most of India, and lived 300-230 BCE, more or less. Buddhism in India didn't last, of course, but it was exported.

Thanks, John, you're a treasure-trove of knowledge. I'm beginning to wonder if there's anything you don't know? :D

I'm still wondering about the "sheath" bit. I just went to Google Translate to find the Latin word for sheath. I got: vagina sua:. Then I swapped, to get the English word for vagina sua without the colon, and got scabbard.

I will think more about the poem.

***

I ran the Ronsard poems through the Google machine, so I could see the literal English, and hear the French. I have astounding difficulty with French. The sounds come out of my speakers, and I can barely follow along, trying to match sounds to letters. With Latin or German I don't have this kind of difficulty, though I have a little trouble with Spanish. But alas, I am deaf, dumb and blind to French, it appears. :o

My great loss, as I would so love to read Baudelaire in the original, not to mention Balzac, Proust, Rimbaud, Verlaine, the list goes on...

Hi Bill,

To my mind a sheath is for a knife, a scabbard for a sword, but they are in essence the same thing. Yes, i suspect - it's my hunch - that the young Pound found it worthwhile to juxtapose sheath with virginal, to make some sort of complicated pun. The word sheath seems overdetermined to me. It also makes me think of Shakespeare's "Whate'er thou hast, thou hast thy will."
When Byron writes "For the sword outwears the sheath", I don't think he is punning. But then i like that poem.
Baudelaire translated Poe. I think he has a tremendous ear, and I agree, it is a shame not to get to see him in the French. But I also agree, French is in some ways harder than German is.

Cheers,
John

I think Death and the Maiden is the standard interpretation of Piazza Piece. The play of that against stereotypical southern gentility is for me the major driver of the poem's effect.

The image of Death as a southern gentleman in a dustcoat is a beauty. It reminds me of the legendary (& perhaps historical) mystery man who politely assisted women in jumping from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, 1911, here.

— Woody

Julie,

I've been hunting for poems about older men wooing young beauties, and have found a few. This one is by a contemporary of Shakespeare, but it is one of what looks like a long series, and may be read in a different light if put in context. I assume 'decade' means the same as 'decad'. This version is punctuated differently than the one appearing in the anthology I found it in, Six Centuries of Great Poetry, edited by Robert Penn Warren and Albert Erskine.

I imagine L8 and L12 would irritate the crap out of me, were I the addressee. Unless the word "relieve" meant something else in that period?


Diana
The Fourth Decade
Sonnet X. Hope, like the hyæna, coming to be old

Hope, like the hyæna, coming to be old,
Alters his shape; is turned into Despair.
Pity my hoary hopes! Maid of Clear Mould!
Think not that frowns can ever make thee fair!
What harm is it to kiss, to laugh, to play?
Beauty’s no blossom, if it be not used.
Sweet dalliance keeps the wrinkles long away:
Repentance follows them that have refused.
To bring you to the knowledge of your good
I seek, I sue. O try, and then believe!
Each image can be chaste that’s carved of wood.
You show you live, when men you do relieve.
Iron with wearing shines. Rust wasteth treasure
On earth, but love there is no other pleasure.

— Henry Constable

***

I like the following poem a great deal better. I prefer it because the mature poet is admitting to having unseemly and inappropriate desires for youthful beauty, plus it's realistic and self-effacing, which is right up my poetic alley:


The Vision

Sitting alone, as one forsook,
Close by a silver-shedding brook,
With hands held up to love, I wept;
And after sorrows spent I slept:
Then in a vision I did see
A glorious form appear to me:
A virgin's face she had; her dress
Was like a sprightly Spartaness.
A silver bow, with green silk strung,
Down from her comely shoulders hung:
And as she stood, the wanton air
Dangled the ringlets of her hair.
Her legs were such Diana shows
When, tucked up, she a-hunting goes;
With buskins shortened to descry
The happy dawning of her thigh:
Which when I saw, I made access
To kiss that tempting nakedness:
But she forbade me with a wand
Of myrtle she had in her hand:
And, chiding me, said: Hence, remove,
Herrick, thou art too coarse to love.

— Robert Herrick