Lucasta - Audiolibro Gratis

Lucasta is the main collection of poems by Richard Lovelace, the Royalist soldier and courtier who became one of the best-known Cavalier poets. It was published in 1649, the year Charles I was executed, and a second gathering of his verse appeared after his death under the title Lucasta: Posthume Poems.

Many of the poems are addressed to Lucasta, an idealised beloved whose identity has never been settled, and others to friends, patrons and fellow poets. The collection contains Lovelace's two most famous lyrics: To Lucasta, Going to the Wars, in which a lover explains why duty must take him from her, and To Althea, from Prison, written after he was jailed for his Royalist petition, which insists that true freedom lies in the mind and heart. Alongside these are songs, love lyrics, pastoral pieces, elegies, and witty poems on small subjects such as The Grasshopper, which mix playfulness with reflections on loyalty in hard times.

Lucasta captures the Cavalier ideal of grace, wit and honour at the very moment the world that produced it was collapsing. Its best poems are short, musical and highly quotable. It will appeal to readers of seventeenth-century poetry, students of the Civil War period, and anyone who enjoys Herrick, Suckling or the metaphysical poets.