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"Despite the fact that Ezra Pound wrote him off for his "asinine bigotry" and "the coarseness of his mentality", John Milton is usually celebrated as the politically radical, high-minded author of that great English epic Paradise Lost.
So Dr Jennifer Batt, an English lecturer at the University of Oxford, was somewhat surprised when she came across a filthy, innuendo-laden rhyme "by Milton" while reading a forgotten, early 18th-century poetic anthology.
Introduced in the volume as An Extempore Upon a f*****, by Milton, the rather smutty ditty reads: "Have you not in a Chimney seen / A f***** which is moist and green / How coyly it receives the Heat / And at both ends do's weep and sweat? / So fares it with a tender Maid / When first upon her Back she's laid / But like dry Wood th' experienced Dame / Cracks and rejoices in the Flame."
According to Batt, "if the attribution were correct, it would prompt a major revision of our ideas about Milton".
The coarse, and frankly misogynistic verse likens a young woman to a f*****, a bunch of damp sticks, which, when cast upon the fire, produces moisture "at both ends", like (according to the poem) a weeping virgin when sexually aroused. By contrast, the more sexually experienced woman is more like dry wood, which becomes joyfully enflamed when put on the fire..."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/sep/22/john-milton-filthy-poem-oxford
So Dr Jennifer Batt, an English lecturer at the University of Oxford, was somewhat surprised when she came across a filthy, innuendo-laden rhyme "by Milton" while reading a forgotten, early 18th-century poetic anthology.
Introduced in the volume as An Extempore Upon a f*****, by Milton, the rather smutty ditty reads: "Have you not in a Chimney seen / A f***** which is moist and green / How coyly it receives the Heat / And at both ends do's weep and sweat? / So fares it with a tender Maid / When first upon her Back she's laid / But like dry Wood th' experienced Dame / Cracks and rejoices in the Flame."
According to Batt, "if the attribution were correct, it would prompt a major revision of our ideas about Milton".
The coarse, and frankly misogynistic verse likens a young woman to a f*****, a bunch of damp sticks, which, when cast upon the fire, produces moisture "at both ends", like (according to the poem) a weeping virgin when sexually aroused. By contrast, the more sexually experienced woman is more like dry wood, which becomes joyfully enflamed when put on the fire..."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/sep/22/john-milton-filthy-poem-oxford
