John Wilmot was born in Ditchley, Oxforshire, the son of a Puritan mother and a Royalist father. After the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, Rochester was rewarded with a royal pension of £500 a year for his father's loyalty to Charles I. From 1662 to 1664 he traveled on the Continent with is tutor, the Scottish physician Sir Andrew Balfour. In 1665, after a failed attempt to abduct the heiress, Elizabeth Malet, he was appointed a commander in the navy and distinguished himself in battle. In 1667 he married Elizabeth Malet and began to write a series of love lyrics, ostensibly addressed to her. Within a few years Rochester's reckless personality involved him in a series of escapades. Though his poetry and satires were much admired and he became a leading literary figure, he gradually sank into illness and depression. On his deathbed he experienced a religious conversion and repented his lifelong excesses.

 

 

A Ramble in St. James's Park

Much wine had passed, with grave discourse,
Of who fucks who, and who does worse
(Such as you usually do hear
From those that diet at the Bear),
When I, who still take care to see
Drunkenness relieved by lechery,
Went out into St. James' Park
To cool my head and dire my heart,
But though St. James has the' honour on't,
'Tis consecrate to prick and cunt.
There, by a most incestuous Birth,
Strange Woods Spring from the teeming Earth;
For they relate how heretofore,
When Ancient Picts began to Whore,
Deluded of his Assignation,
(Jilting it seems was then the fashion.)
Poor pensive Lover in this place,
Would Frig upon his Mother's Face;
Whence Rows of Mandrakes tall did rise,
Whose Lewd tops Fuck'd the very Skies.
Each imitated Branch do's twine
In some Love Fold of Arctine;
And nightly now beneath their Shade
Are Bugg'ries, Rapes and Incests made,
Unto this All-sin-Sheltering Grove,
Whores of the Bulk and the Alcove,
Great Ladies, Chambermaids and Drudges,
The Rag-picker and Heiress trudges.

 

 

Régime de Vivre

I rise at eleven, I dine about two,
I get drunk before seven; and the next thing I do,
I send for my whore, when for fear of a clap,
I spend in her hand, and I spew in her lap.
Then we quarrel and scold, 'till I fall fast asleep,
When the bitch, growing bold, to my pocket does creep;
Then slyly she leaves me, and, to revenge the affront,
At once she bereaves me of money and cunt.
If by chance then I wake, hot-headed and drunk,
What a coil do I make for the loss of my punk!
I storm and I roar, and I fall in a rage,
And missing my whore, I bugger my page.
Then, crop-sick all morning, I rail at my men,
And in bed I lie yawning 'till eleven again.