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In theoretical terms, both reformation and revolution have conceived a struggle for power.As part of the 16 th century European religious movements marked by rejection or modification of some Roman Catholic doctrines and practices as well as the establishment of the Protestant churches, the English Reformation indicated that the Church of England broke away from the authority of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church. The so-called“Puritan Revolution”or“English Bourgeois Revolution”stemmed from the conflict between Charles I and Parliament over an Irish insurrection with evolving consequences such as the trial and execution of an anointed sovereign and the presence of a standing army throughout the 1650s. It was combined with the proliferation of radical religious sects that shook the very foundations of British society and ultimately facilitated the restoration of Charles II in 1660. The revolution was often regarded as“the last civil war fought on English soil”, where domestic manipulation of power has been temporarily settled, but potentially initiated the subsequent waves of outward power expansion—the massive orchestration of imperial expansion and colonisation.
Sir William Davenant is a Poet Laureate, playwright and theatre manager, and Civil War hero, probably one of the most influential but neglected figures in the history of British theatre. Two important identity problems have perplexed his readers, among which the first is his relationship with William Shakespeare in that the gossip held that: the famous playwright may even have been his father; and the second is his escape of execution as a supporter of King Charles I during the Civil Wars. After the execution of Charles I, he went to aid the Royalist cause in America as lieutenant governor of Maryland, but his ship was captured in the English Channel and imprisoned in the Tower of London until 1654. Apart from his numerous dramatic works, his poetry includes Madagascar and other Poems (1638) and Gondibert (1651), a tale of chivalry in 1,700 quatrains which was never to be completed. The excerpted poem“The Soldier Going to the Field”is from his posthumous poetic publication in 1672.
Preserve thy sighs, unthrifty girl,
To purify the air;
Thy tears to thread instead of pearl
On bracelets of thy hair.
The trumpet makes the echo hoarse
And wakes the louder drum;
Expense of grief gains no remorse
When sorrow should be dumb.
For I must go where lazy Peace
Will hide her drowsy head,
And, for the sport of Kings, increase
The number of the dead.
But first I'll chide thy cruel theft:
Can I in war delight,
Who being of my heart bereft
Can have no heart to fight?
Thou know'st the sacred Laws of old
Ordained a thief should pay,
To quit him of his theft, sevenfold
What he had stolen away.
Thy payment shall but double be;
O then with speed resign
My own seducèd heart to me,
Accompanied with thine.
John Milton is a prose polemicist, dramatist, and poet. He attacked both the idea and the supposed enormities of English episcopacy, championing the cause of the Puritans and Oliver Cromwell with a series of pamphlets advocating radical political topics including the morality of divorce, the freedom of the press, populism, and sanctioned regicide, among the great works of which the greatest is
Areopagitica: A Speech of Mr. John Milton for the
Liberty of Unlicenced Printing, to the Parliament of England
(1644), arguing for a far broader constitutional liberty. His collected volumes of verse,
Poems of Mr. John Milton, both English
and Latin, Compos'd at Several Times
(1645), and
his two most-remembered Paradise Lost
(1667) and
Paradise Regained
(1671), expressed his spirit of revolt by chronicling the biblical Satan's temptation of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from Eden. The excerpted sonnet“On the Late Massacre in Piedmont”(1673) contributes to remembering the real world rebellious tragedy.
Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold,
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old
When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones,
Forget not; in thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese that rolled
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
To Heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow
O'er all th' Italian fields where still doth sway
The triple tyrant, that from these may grow
A hundredfold, who having learnt thy way,
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.
Richard Lovelace is an English poet, soldier, and Royalist, whose graceful lyrics and dashing career made him the prototype of the perfect Cavalier with a legendary life as a soldier, lover, and courtier. Persecuted for his unflagging support of King Charles I, he died in dire poverty. His greatest poetic contribution is Lucasta; Posthume Poems of Richard Lovelace, Esq. (1659), from which the excerpt“To Lucasta, Going to the Wars”(1649) comes.
Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind,
That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind
To war and arms I fly.
True, a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.
Yet this inconstancy is such
As you too shall adore;
I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honour more.
Andrew Marvell is one of the best Metaphysical Poets and a well-known politician during that turbulent period of English history. The inconsistencies and ambiguities within his work and the scarcity of information about his personal life have enlisted a lot of contemporary academic curiosity. His collection of verses Miscellaneous Poems was published posthumously in 1684 . The poem“An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland”(1650) marks those complexities.
The forward youth that would appear
Must now forsake his Muses dear ,
Nor in the shadows sing
His numbers languishing.
'Tis time to leave the books in dust.
And oil the unusèd armour's rust,
Removing from the wall
The corslet of the hall.
So restless Cromwell could not cease
In the inglorious arts of peace,
But through adventurous war
Urgèd his active star:
And like the three-forked lightning, first
Breaking the clouds where it was nurst,
Did thorough his own side
His fiery way divide:
For'tis all one to courage high,
The emulous, or enemy;
—And with such, to enclose
—Is more than to oppose.
Then burning through the air he went
And palaces and temples rent;
And Caesar's head at last
Did through his laurels blast.
'Tis madness to resist or blame
The force of angry Heaven's flame;
And if we would speak true,
Much to the man is due,
Who, from his private gardens, where
He lived reservèd and austere
(As if his highest plot
To plant the bergamot),
Could by industrious valour climb
To ruin the great work of time,
And cast the Kingdom old
Into another mould.
Though Justice against Fate complain,
And plead the ancient rights in vain—
But those do hold or break
As men are strong or weak—
Nature, that hateth emptiness,
Allows of penetration less,
And therefore must make room
Where greater spirits come.
What field of all the civil wars
Where his were not the deepest scars?
And Hampton shows what part
He had of wiser art;
Where, twining subtle fears with hope,
He wove a net of such a scope
That Charles himself might chase
To Car's brook's narrow case;
That thence the Royal Actor borne
The tragic scaffold might adorn:
While round the armèd bands
Did clap their bloody hands.
He nothing common did or mean
Upon that memorable scene,
But with his keener eye
The axe's edge did try;
Nor called the Gods, with vulgar spite,
To vindicate his helpless right;
But bowed his comely head
Down, as upon a bed.
This was that memorable hour
Which first assured the forcèd power:
So when they did design
The Capitol's first line,
A bleeding head, where they begun,
Did fright the architects to run;
And yet in that the State
Foresaw its happy fate!
And now the Irish are ashamed
To see themselves in one year tamed:
So much one man can do
That does both act and know.
They can affirm his praises best,
And have, though overcome, confest
How good he is, how just
And fit for highest trust;
Nor yet grown stiffer with command,
But still in the Republic's hand—
How fit he is to sway
That can so well obey!
He to the Commons' feet presents
A Kingdom for his first year's rents,
And, what he may, forbears
His fame, to make it theirs:
And has his sword and spoils ungirt
To lay them at the public's skirt.
So when the falcon high
Falls heavy from the sky,
She, having killed, no more does search
But on the next green bough to perch,
Where, when he first does lure,
The falconer has her sure.
What may not then our Isle presume
While victory his crest does plume?
What may not others fear,
If thus he crown each year?
As Caesar he, ere long, to Gaul,
To Italy an Hannibal,
And to all States not free
Shall climacteric be.
The Pict no shelter now shall find
Within his particoloured mind,
But from this valour sad
Shrinks underneath the plaid,
Happy, if in the tufted brake
The English hunter him mistake,
Nor lay his hounds in near
The Caledonian deer.
But thou, the War's and Fortune's son,
March indefatigably on;
And for the last effect,
Still keep thy sword erect:
Besides the force it has to fright
The spirits of the shady night,
The same arts that did gain
A power, must it maintain.