John Suckling (poet) - Poetry

Poetry

Among the best known of his minor pieces are the "Ballade upon a Wedding," on the occasion of the marriage of Roger Boyle, afterwards Earl of Orrery, and Lady Margaret Howard, "I prithee, send me back my heart," "Out upon it, I have loved three whole days together," and "Why so pale and wan, fond lover?" from Aglaura. "A Sessions of the Poets," describing a meeting of the contemporary versifiers under the presidency of Apollo to decide who should wear the laurel wreath, is the prototype of many later satires.

A collection of Suckling's poems was first published in 1646 as Fragmenta aurea. The so-called Selections (1836) published by Alfred Inigo Suckling is in fact a complete edition of his works, of which WC Hazlitt's edition (1874; revised ed., 1892) is little more than a reprint with some additions. The Poems and Songs of Sir John Suckling, edited by John Gray and decorated with woodcut border and initials by Charles Ricketts, was artistically printed at the Ballantyne Press in 1896. In 1910 Suckling's works in prose and verse were edited by A. Hamilton Thompson. For anecdotes of Suckling's life see John Aubrey's Brief Lives (Clarendon Press ed., ii.242).