‘To Lucasta, Going to the Wars’
Tell me not (Sweet) I am unkind, That from the nunnery Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind To war and arms I fly. True, a new mistress now I chase The first foe in the field; And with a stronger faith embrace A sword, a horse, a shield. Yet this inconstancy is such As you too shall adore; I could not love thee (Dear) so much, Lov’d I not Honour more.
With these stirring words, 17th-century English poet Richard Lovelace celebrates all those who go to war for love of country and honor, even when it involves painful separations. In this poem, the speaker seeks to console his beloved as he rides off to battle, explaining to her that his love of honor and duty does not lessen his love for her—on the contrary, these various loves complement rather than compete with one another. It is his devotion to honor that enables him to love his lady so profoundly.
Lovelace likely wrote this poem to his fiancée Lucy Sacheverell when he was preparing to fight on behalf of the king during the English Civil Wars. “Lucasta” is thus a kind of sobriquet for “Lucy” and a combination of the Latin words “lux” (meaning “light”) and “casta” (meaning “pure” or “chaste”). Thus the lady’s name suggests that she is an embodiment of “pure light.”
The poem opens in the middle of an implied debate between the speaker and his lady, who has just accused him of unkindness and infidelity in choosing to leave her for battle. The knight offers a lucid and inspiring defense of himself in just three brief quatrains (four-line stanzas).
He begins by focusing on what he is leaving: the “chaste breast” and “quiet mind” of Lucasta. The poet employs religious language to express the ineffable beauty, innocence, and peace of his lady—for example, “chaste,” “nunnery,” “quiet mind.” He likens her to a religious retreat or hermitage, full of innocence and silence, far from the tumult of the world. But the conclusion of the stanza strikes the tragic note. “To war and arms I fly”—this trumpet call draws the speaker from his love’s embrace into the roar and shock of battle. Lovelace masterfully juxtaposes the place of peace associated with the beloved to the place of chaos associated with war.
If the poet loved Lucasta with almost religious devotion, the same holds true—perhaps all the more so—with regard to his sense of duty and honor. The alliteration in “first foe in the field” lends an urgency, intensity, and excitement to the stanza. It slips easily off the tongue. In the martial references, we sense a half-suppressed excitement in the poet—he is eager to be off. Yet, at the same time, he is grieved to part with Lucasta—the “oh” sounds in “foe,” “sword,” “horse,” and “stronger” are remindful of a moan of grief.
The friction between the thrill of battle and the pain of separation provides the poem with much of its interest and power, and it speaks to the work’s larger theme. The speaker’s love for his king and country drives him to leave his lady. Herein lies the paradox for all soldiers throughout history: In order to save the things they love—home, family, country—they must leave them, possibly forever. Tragically, such was the case for Lovelace with regard to Lucy: She received a false report of his death during the war and married someone else.
In the final stanza of the poem, the poet explains why his love should not blame him for leaving her. He explains that it is precisely his appreciation for honor and duty that makes him love her so well, that makes him a worthy lover. In Tearle’s paraphrase, “If I were not honourable, I wouldn’t be a fit lover for you—so the very thing that takes me away from you, namely my sense of duty and honour, is the thing that makes it possible for me to be a good lover for you in the first place.” This is how the poet resolves the tension between the call of duty and the call of love: Ultimately, they are the same thing.
Here is the heart of the poem: For a man of Lovelace’s caliber, his various obligations, duties, loyalties, and loves are a chain of interrelated allegiances. Love of country feeds into love of king, which feeds into love of duty, which feeds into love of lady. We might say that for the man of chivalry, none of these things are completely separable. He defends his country because it is the home of his beloved; and at the same time, he loves his beloved in part because she is the glory of her people, the fruit of all that is best in his homeland and native culture. He fights for his king because the king is the head of the country; yet, simultaneously, he defends the country, because it belongs to his well-revered king, who is like a father and friend. Finally, in the medieval conception (still present in Lovelace’s time), the king symbolically filled a role analogous to Christ, the Universal King. Thus loyalty to king was often seen as loyalty to God himself.
The great-hearted man epitomized in this poem lives a life of radical commitment to all the things that he believes in, linked one to the other through the integrated web of connections that make up human life—family, faith, fealty—all of it sealed by honor.
