Poetry Codex

Restoration & Augustan

Thomas D'Urfey

1653–1723

Thomas D'Urfey (1653-1723) was an English songwriter, poet and playwright, born in Exeter of Huguenot descent. He came to London to study law but turned to the stage and wrote some thirty plays, among them Madam Fickle (1676) and The Comical History of Don Quixote (1694-96). He was a familiar figure at the courts of Charles II, James II, William III and Anne, and was known above all as a writer and singer of comic and bawdy songs.

New Poems, consisting of Satyrs, Elegies and Odes, together with a Choice Collection of the Newest Court Songs (1690), from which this selection is drawn, mixes verse satires, prologues and epilogues, epithalamia and elegies with songs, several of them set by Henry Purcell and John Blow. D'Urfey later gathered songs, his own and others', into Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy (1698-1720), the best-known song collection of its age.

Poems (63)

  1. A New Essay in Defence of Verse, with a Satyr upon the Enemies of Poetry
  2. An Ode to the Queen
  3. The Author Answers His Friend, Who Blames Him for Not Singing, When Desired, He Contradicts the Third Satyr of Horace, beginning with Omnibus hoc vitium est Cantoribus inter Amicos
  4. To the Right Honourable the Earl of Radnor on His Marriage
  5. To a Lady, Twitting Him with His Being Peevish, and Having Ill Humours
  6. A Parallel
  7. To the Right Honourable the Lady E. R. Upon Her Finding a Spider in Her Bed
  8. A True Tale of a True Intrigue
  9. A Lash at Atheists
  10. To Cynthia (If Beauty by Enjoyment can)
  11. A Prologue, by Way of Satyr, Spoke before King Charles II. at New-Market
  12. Epithalamy on the Marriage of the Right Honourable the Lady Essex Roberts
  13. The Health
  14. Paid for Peeping
  15. Song
  16. Against Free-Will
  17. A Song (I Follow'd Fame and got Renown)
  18. A Dialogue between a Town Spark and His Miss
  19. To Cynthia (Born with the Vices of my kind)
  20. A Mock Song to, When First Amintor Su'd for a Kiss, &c.
  21. Epilogue to the Opera of Dido and Aeneas
  22. Love's Revenge
  23. Epsom-Wells: A Satyr by Way of Dialogue, between Critick and Fame
  24. An Elegy on the Death of the Lady Essex Spicket
  25. An Ode
  26. The King's Health
  27. A Letter Written by the Author for a Friend, to One in Town; Being a Satyr on Dingboy and a Rampant Widow
  28. To the Right Honorable the Lady Olympia R. on Her Genius in Poetry
  29. An Epilogue Intended for a Late Comedy
  30. The Dream
  31. To Cynthia (By all the Sacred Powers I love ye so)
  32. A Letter Written for a Lady in Answer to a Friend
  33. The Farmer's Daughter
  34. A Catch
  35. An Epithalamium on the Marriage of the Lord Morpeth with the Lady Ann Capell
  36. A Song (Forc'd by a Cruel lawless Fate)
  37. A Song (A Lad o' th' Town thus made his moan)
  38. The Moralist
  39. The Old Fumbler
  40. A Dialogue between Philander and Silvia
  41. A Second Burlesque Letter Written for a Friend
  42. The Law of Nature
  43. Song II
  44. An Ode, from the Greek of Anacreon
  45. To Chloris (If my Addresses are grateful)
  46. To Pretty Mrs. H. D. upon the Sight of Her Picture
  47. To Cloris: An Ode
  48. Epigram on the Sacred Memory of King Charles the Second
  49. An Elegy on the Late Holy Father Pope Innocent the Eleventh
  50. To the King: An Ode on His Birth Day
  51. The Scotch Virago
  52. To Chloris (Chloris, for fear you should think to deceive me)
  53. A Catch in Three Parts, Taken from the Latin of Buchanan
  54. Epistle Dedicatory to Her Grace the Duchess
  55. A Poem Panegyrick on His Grace the Duke of Albemarle
  56. Mr. Haines's Second Recantation: A Prologue Intended to Be Spoken by Him Dress'd in a Turkish Habit
  57. The Gowlin
  58. A Prologue to a New Play, Called the Royallist
  59. Kind Lady or, the Loves of Stella and Adonis
  60. The Scotch Lad's Moan
  61. The Call to the Races at New-market
  62. The Country Farmer
  63. Chloe Divine

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