Poetry, Politics and John Milton Andrew Marvel, the unofficial Poet Laureate to Cromwell, wrote one of the main texts of the Commonwealth, ‘An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland’ (1650). He also wrote a poem ‘To Lucasta, Going to the Wars’ (1649). John Milton (1603-1674), is the major figure who links the Renaissance and the Restoration. Both classical and Christian run through all his work, ‘On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity’; ‘Lycidas’ (1637). After the Restoration, he wrote his main work ‘Paradise Lost’ (1667), published in twelve books. It is the major epic poem in English which is about the myth of the Creation, with figures of God and Satan, Adam and Eve, and the Fall of Mankind. Later he wrote the long poem ‘Paradise Regained’ and ‘Samson Agonistes’. John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678; second part in 1684), is a prose allegory. It is possible the most widely read of all books in English literature. Augustans and Satires John Wilmont, Earl of Rochester, was a kind of symbol of the Restoration because of his life: he was a rake, a man who gave his life to pleasure, especially sex and alcohol, but just before he became a Catholic so his life shows both the good and bad sides of pleasure which illustrates a good moral. Satire became an important kind of poetry. John Dryden was a master of satire in poetry after the Restoration. He was a poet, playwright, and essayist. He wrote: Heroic Stanzas praised Cromwell on his death in 1658; To His Sacred Majesty welcomed the return of the king in 1660; satirical poems such as Absalom and Achitophel in 1681, and The Medal in 1682; MacFlecknoe in 1682, which aims at Thomas Shadwell, his literary rival, whom Dryden represents as the master of dullness; essays on the nature of drama and representation such as ‘Of Dramatic Poesy’ in 1668, the first of their kind in English; and his final work, The Secular Masque in 1700. He also wrote more than twenty plays of the new genre at that time, tragicomedy. His best-known example is Marriage-a-la-Mode (1672). His most famous tragedy is All for Love (1678). Restoration Drama The plays of the time reflected the manners and morals of the men and women who had re