Poetry Codex

Restoration & Augustan

Aphra Behn

1640–1689

Aphra Behn (1640–1689) was among the first Englishwomen to earn a living by her pen. Little is certain about her early life; she is said to have spent time in Surinam, and in 1666 she was sent to Antwerp as a spy for Charles II, writing under the code name Astrea. Back in London she turned to the stage, and from The Forc’d Marriage (1670) to The Rover (1677) and beyond she became one of the most successful playwrights of the Restoration, later adding prose fiction such as Oroonoko (1688). She was buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey.

Her verse was published in Poems upon Several Occasions (1684) and in A Miscellany (1685), and further pieces appeared after her death. It ranges from songs written for her plays, Pindaric odes and pastoral dialogues to satires, epistles to friends and patrons, and elegies for Rochester and Waller. This selection takes her own short and occasional poems from the sixth volume of Montague Summers’s edition (1915); her translations from Tallemant, A Voyage to the Isle of Love and Lycidus, are left out.

Poems (83)

  1. The Golden Age
  2. A Farewel to Celladon, on His Going into Ireland
  3. On a Juniper-Tree, Cut Down to Make Busks
  4. On the Death of Mr. Grinhil, the Famous Painter
  5. A Ballad on Mr. J. H. to Amoret, Asking Why I Was So Sad
  6. Our Cabal
  7. The Willing Mistriss
  8. Love Arm’d
  9. The Complaint
  10. The Invitation
  11. When Jemmy First Began to Love
  12. To Mr. Creech (under the Name of Daphnis) on His Excellent Translation of Lucretius
  13. To Mrs. W. on Her Excellent Verses (Writ in Praise of Some I Had Made on the Earl of Rochester) Written in a Fit of Sickness
  14. The Sence of a Letter Sent Me, Made into Verse; to a New Tune
  15. The Return
  16. On a Copy of Verses Made in a Dream, and Sent to Me in a Morning before I Was Awake
  17. To My Lady Morland at Tunbridge
  18. Song to Ceres
  19. Song in the Same Play, by the Wavering Nymph
  20. The Disappointment
  21. On a Locket of Hair Wove in a True-Loves Knot, Given Me by Sir R. O.
  22. The Dream: A Song
  23. A Letter to a Brother of the Pen in Tribulation
  24. The Reflection: A Song
  25. To Pesibles Tune
  26. On Her Loving Two Equally
  27. The Counsel: A Song
  28. The Surprize
  29. Ah! What Can Mean That Eager Joy
  30. The Invitation: A Song
  31. Silvio’s Complaint: A Song
  32. In Imitation of Horace
  33. To Lysander, Who Made Some Verses on a Discourse of Loves Fire
  34. A Dialogue for an Entertainment at Court, between Damon and Sylvia
  35. On Mr. J. H. in a Fit of Sickness
  36. To Lysander, on Some Verses He Writ, and Asking More for His Heart Then ’Twas Worth
  37. To the Honourable Edward Howard, on His Comedy Called The New Utopia
  38. To Lysander at the Musick-Meeting
  39. An Ode to Love
  40. Love Reveng’d: A Song
  41. Young Jemmy Was a Lad
  42. The Cabal at Nickey Nackeys
  43. A Paraphrase on the Eleventh Ode out of the First Book of Horace
  44. A Translation
  45. A Paraphrase on Ovid’s Epistle of Oenone to Paris
  46. On the Honourable Sir Francis Fane, on His Play Call’d the Sacrifice
  47. To Damon: To Inquire of Him if He Cou’d Tell Me by the Style, Who Writ Me a Copy of Verses That Came to Me in an Unknown Hand
  48. To Alexis in Answer to His Poem against Fruition
  49. To Alexis, on His Saying, I Lov’d a Man That Talk’d Much
  50. On the Marriage of the Right Honourable the Earle of Dorset and Middlesex, to the Lady Mary Compton: A Pastoral Pindarick
  51. On Desire: A Pindarick
  52. To Amintas, upon Reading the Lives of Some of the Romans
  53. On the First Discovery of Falseness in Amintas
  54. To the Fair Clarinda, Who Made Love to Me, Imagin’d More than Woman
  55. That Beauty I Ador’d Before
  56. On the Death of the Late Earl of Rochester
  57. Cease, Cease, Aminta, to Complain
  58. While, Iris, I at Distance Gaze
  59. A Paraphrase on the Lords Prayer
  60. Selinda and Cloris, Made in an Entertainment at Court
  61. A Pindaric to Mr. P. Who Sings Finely
  62. On the Author of That Excellent Book Intituled The Way to Health, Long Life, and Happiness
  63. Epitaph on the Tombstone of a Child, the Last of Seven That Died Before
  64. Epilogue to the Jealous Lovers
  65. A Pastoral to Mr. Stafford, under the Name of Silvio, on His Translation of the Death of Camilla out of Virgil
  66. Venus and Cupid
  67. Verses Design’d by Mrs. A. Behn to Be Sent to a Fair Lady, That Desir’d She Would Absent Herself to Cure Her Love
  68. On a Conventicle
  69. The Gods Are Not More Blest Than He
  70. The Complaint of the Poor Cavaliers
  71. On a Pin That Hurt Amintas’ Eye
  72. To Mrs. Harsenet, on the Report of a Beauty, Which She Went to See at Church
  73. For Damon, Being Ask’d a Reason for His Love
  74. A Letter to the Earl of Kildare, Dissuading Him from Marrying Moll Howard
  75. ’Tis Not Your Saying That You Love
  76. Prologue to Romulus
  77. Epilogue to Romulus
  78. Satyr on Dryden
  79. Prologue to Valentinian
  80. To Henry Higden, Esq., on His Translation of the Tenth Satyr of Juvenal
  81. On the Death of E. Waller, Esq.
  82. A Pindaric Poem to the Reverend Doctor Burnet, on the Honour He Did Me of Enquiring after Me and My Muse
  83. The Libertine

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