below..."('The Imperfect Enjoyment" 7-10)The poem then becomes more explicit as Rochester gets angry with himself for his lack of performance, and uses some lewd language to describe the woman, referring to her as a "cunt", while he insists on trying to carry on what he has begun, with his "dead cinder". The poem then changes again, becoming more political than romantic - a complete change from how it was begun. This once again highlights Rochester's pessimism and dissatisfaction. These beliefs also highlight how others felt at the time, even if they chose not to write what they were truly feeling so as not to offend. Rochester was not like this - he was content to show his poems to only a small circle in their unexpurgated forms rather than to rewrite them in order to make money from them, unlike poets such as Dryden. In this way, he is to be admired, and it is easy to understand why people such as Hazlitt respected him. Through the use of obscenity, Rochester actually makes some good points in poems such as Satyr and A Satyr Against King Charles II. Although it takes a certain amount of interpretation, he can be seen to be successful in his use of obscenity in satire, although he has proved that he does not always need to take this route to write an effective and biting satirical poem. In fact, the indecency at times gives them a 'school boy humour' quality, which takes away some of the credibility which may have existed in the poems. Also it can be concluded that the use of obscenity was often motivated by disquiet with certain situations at the time, as can be seen from his comments about the king and some of the members in his court, but again this was not always the case. Occasionally his bawdy language was used in poems that mimicked the style of some very early poets such as Homer and Ovid, which may explain his views concerning women. An example of this comes out in A Letter From Artemisia in the Town to Chloe in the Country,...
