Song: Absent From Thee
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester * Track #6 On AS and A-Level English Literature Anthology: Love Poetry Throughout The Ages
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Album AS and A-Level English Literature Anthology: Love Poetry Throughout The Ages
- #1Whoso List to Hunt
Thomas Wyatt
- #2
Sonnet 116William Shakespeare
- #3The Flea
John Donne
- #4To His Coy Mistress
Andrew Marvell
- #5
The ScrutinyRichard Lovelace
- #6Song: Absent From Thee
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
- #7
The Garden of LoveWilliam Blake
- #8Song (Ae fond kiss)
Robert Burns
- #9She Walks in Beauty
Lord Byron
- #10
RememberChristina Rossetti
- #11
The Ruined MaidThomas Hardy
- #12At An Inn
Thomas Hardy
- #13La Belle Dame sans Merci
John Keats
- #14
Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno CynaraeErnest Dowson
- #15I, being born a woman and distressed (Sonnet XLI)
Edna St. Vincent Millay
- #16
Love and a QuestionRobert Frost
- #17A Quoi Bon Dire
Charlotte Mew
- #18One Flesh
Elizabeth Jennings
- #19Meeting Point
Louis MacNeice
- #20For My Lover, Returning To His Wife
Anne Sexton
- #21
Wild OatPhilip Larkin
- #22Talking in Bed - The Whitsun Weddings
Philip Larkin
- #23
PunishmentSeamus Heaney
- #24Vergissmeinnicht
Keith Douglas
- #25Timer
Tony Harrison
- #26The Love Poem
Carol Ann Duffy
- #27Long Finish
Paul Muldoon
- #28
After the LunchWendy Cope
Song: Absent From Thee by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
Performed by
John Wilmot, Earl of RochesterAbout
When in 1660, after 19 years of exile, Charles II took the throne the ‘pendulum of England’s morality was said to have swung from repression to licence almost overnight.’
Theatres reopened and Puritanism lost its momentum. Bawdy ‘Restoration Comedy’ became a recognisable genre, and women were allow...
Song: Absent From Thee Annotated
Absent from thee I languish still;
Then ask me not, when I return?
The straying fool 'twill plainly kill
To wish all day, all night to mourn.
Dear! from thine arms then let me fly,
That my fantastic mind may prove
The torments it deserves to try
That tears my fixed heart from my love.
When, wearied with a world of woe,
To thy safe bosom I retire
where love and peace and truth does flow,
May I contented there expire,
Lest, once more wandering from that heaven,
I fall on some base heart unblest,
Faithless to thee, false, unforgiven,
And lose my everlasting rest.