Thomas Carew, "Mediocrity in Love Rejected" (24th Friend)

Today, we’ll meet Mr. Thomas Carew, born in Kent in 1594 or ‘95, the youngest of three children. His early life had its ups and downs - as a young man, he meant to follow his father’s career path into law, but he studied little and that was a dead-end. He was hired into secretarial roles to diplomats in Italy and France, but shot himself in the foot by writing too frankly of a patron’s faults.

After some years of wasted time, he was able to integrate himself into circles around the royal court (taking more care to keep certain opinions of his friends and patrons to himself). Carew was admitted as a gentleman of the privy chamber in 1630, and shortly after as sewer to the king, whose job was apparently to taste the king’s food and then serve it at his table.

Sounds like a pretty good gig, and it’s one that he held until his death in 1640.

As a poet, Carew was something of a peripheral figure of the Tribe of Ben. He didn’t know Jonson well personally, but was part of that general scene. He’s best known for his love poems addressed to “Celia,” whose identity is obscure. “Celia,” I believe, was somewhat common as a generic name among poets at the time, so Celia may not have been a real person at all. He also wrote a couple country-house poems, a masque, and elegies.

Carew had an excellent reputation in his own time and seems well-regarded by critics of the last few decades, but for a very long time he was regarded as more of a second-tier poet at best. His work is often very good, if unimaginative, and in a few cases a bit awkward. Personally, I enjoy most of his work, and when your contemporaries and near-contemporaries include men like Shakespeare, Milton, Donne, and Jonson, being a tier below is no shame.

Oh, maybe I should point out before we get to the poem that “Carew” is pronounced like “Carrey,” because English is like that sometimes.

Anyway, the poem I memorised is “Mediocrity in Love Rejected.”

Give me more love or more disdain;
The torrid, or the frozen zone,
Bring equal ease unto my pain;
The temperate affords me none;
Either extreme, of love, or hate,
Is sweeter than a calm estate.

Give me a storm; if it be love,
Like Danae in that golden show’r. I swim in pleasure; if it prove
Disdain, that torrent will devour
My vulture-hopes; and he’s possess’d
Of heaven, that’s but from hell releas’d.

Then crown my joys, or cure my pain;
Give me more love, or more disdain.

It’s a sonnet, of which we’ve seen several and will see several more, two sextets and a closing couplet. There’s no turn in this one, though - the second sextet develops the first, the couplet amplifies the theme and repeats the first line. Simple, but effective.