Cavalier Poets

Though the Cavalier Poets only occasionally imitated the strenuous intellectual conceits of Donne, and his followers, and were fervent admirers of Jonson's elegance, they took care to learn from both parties.

Thomas Carew, Sir John Suckling, Richard Lovelace, Lord Herbert

They are 'cavalier' in the sense, not only of being Royalists (though Waller changed sides twice), but in the sense that they distrust the over-earnest, the too intense. They accept the ideal of the Renaissance Gentleman who is at once lover, soldier, wit, man of affairs, musician, and poet, but abandon the notion of his being also a pattern of Christian chivalry. They avoid the subject of religion, apart from making one or two graceful speeches. They attempt no plumbing of the depths of the soul. They treat life cavalierly, indeed, and sometimes they treat poetic convention cavalierly too. For them life is far too enjoyable for much of it to be spent sweating over verses in a study. The poems must be written in the intervals of living, and are celebratory of things that are much livelier than mere philosophy or art. To put it in a nutshell, the Mistress in no longer an impossibly chaste Goddess to be wooed with sighs, but a woman who may be spoken to in a forthright fashion.