"If I by miracle can be
This livelong minute true to thee
'Tis all that heav'n allows."
The Earl of Rochester was England's first celebrity poet, a man who epitomized the theatricality, licentiousness, and skepticism of the Restoration age. But his scandalous reputation belies the variety and sophistication of his work: his love poems set new standards not only for sexual explicitness but also for psychological acuity and lyric grace, while his satires broke new ground as much by the refinement of their ironies as by the brutality of their invective.
A fascinatingly...