Richard Lovelace: The Quotable Unknown

It is frequently interesting to find where a familiar quote comes from. It is particularly interesting to find a couple familiar quotes that came from someone you've never heard of.

I'm reading Sound and Sense by Laurence Perrine, which is essentially a textbook for students of poetry. The subtitle is "An Introduction to Poetry." I'm not a great lover of poetry; poets depend way too much on symbolism and allusion as far as I'm concerned. Allusion is great if you know what it is they're alluding to, but if you don't you're clueless. Still, I'm OK with that. What I really don't care for is symbolism. I don't do well when it comes to reading between the lines. I want things stated clearly and bluntly. Otherwise I generally miss them. But I digress.

My point is, I'm reading this text on poetry and I came across two poems by Richard Lovelace, who is described as being a Cavalier poet, who supported Charles I in England's civil war. I've never heard of Richard Lovelace, but it turns out I'm familiar with his work. See if this line from "To Lucasta, Going to the Wars" is familiar to you:

I could not love thee, Dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.

So those words come from Richard Lovelace. Then, in the very next poem in the book, "To Althea, From Prison," here's this:

Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage

Lovelace obviously got around a bit, writing to Lucasta while going to war and then to Althea when going to prison for his royalist sympathies, but he also knew his way around words pretty well, too, considering that they've survived nearly 400 years.

Two well known quotes from one guy I've never heard of? That's pretty dang interesting in my book.