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| Preface | |
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| Introduction | |
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| Rochester's Life | |
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| Rochester's Poetry | |
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| This Edition | |
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| Rochester Studies 1925-1967 | |
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| Prentice Work (1665-1671) | |
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| Song ('Twas a dispute 'twixt heaven and earth) | |
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| A Pastoral Dialogue between Alexis and Strephon (There sighs not on the plain) | |
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| A Dialogue between Strephon and Daphne (Prithee now, fond fool, give o'er) | |
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| Song (Give me leave to rail at you) | |
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| A Song (Insulting beauty, you misspend) | |
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| A Song (My dear mistress has a heart) | |
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| Song (While on those lovely looks I gaze) | |
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| Song (At last you'll force me to confess) | |
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| Woman's Honor (Love bade me hope, and I obeyed) | |
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| The Submission (To this moment a rebel, I throw down my arms) | |
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| Written in a Lady's Prayer Book (Fling this useless book away) | |
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| The Discovery (Celia, the faithful servant you disown) | |
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| The Advice (All things submit themselves to your command) | |
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| Under King Charles II's Picture (I, John Roberts, writ this same) | |
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| Rhyme to Lisbon (A health to Kate) | |
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| Impromptu on Louis XIV (Lorraine you stole; by fraud you got Burgundy) | |
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| Rochester Extempore (And after singing Psalm the Twelfth) | |
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| Spoken Extempore to a Country Clerk after Having Heard Him Sing Psalms (Sternhold and Hopkins had great qualms) | |
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| To My More Than Meritorious Wife (I am, by fate, slave to your will) | |
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| Letter from Miss Price to Lord Chesterfield (These are the gloves that I did mention) | |
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| The Platonic Lady (I could love thee till I die) | |
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| Song (As Chloris full of harmless thought) | |
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| Song (Fair Chloris in a pigsty lay) | |
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| Early Maturity (1672-1673) | |
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| Song (What cruel pains Corinna takes) | |
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| Song (Phyllis, be gentler, I advise) | |
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| Epistle (Could I but make my wishes insolent) | |
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| Sab: Lost (She yields, she yields! Pale Envy said amen) | |
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| Two Translations from Lucretius | |
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| (Great Mother of Aeneas, and of Love) | |
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| (The gods, by right of nature, must possess) | |
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| To Love (O Love! how cold and slow to take my part) | |
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| The Imperfect Enjoyment (Naked she lay, clasped in my longing arms) | |
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| A Ramble in St. James's Park (Much wine had passed, with grave discourse) | |
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| On the Women about Town (Too long the wise Commons have been in debate) | |
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| Song (Quoth the Duchess of Cleveland to counselor Knight) | |
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| The Second Prologue at Court to "The Empress of Morocco," Spoken by the Lady Elizabeth Howard (With has of late took up a trick t' appear) | |
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| Song (Love a woman? You're an ass) | |
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| Upon His Drinking a Bowl (Vulcan, contrive me such a cup) | |
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| Grecian Kindness (The utmost grace the Greeks could show) | |
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| Signior Dildo (You ladies all of merry England) | |
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| A Satyr on Charles II (I' th' isle of Britain, long since famous grown) | |
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| Tragic Maturity (1674-1675) | |
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| Timon (What, Timon! does old age begin t' approach) | |
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| Tunbridge Wells (At five this morn, when Phoebus raised his head) | |
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| Upon His Leaving His Mistress ('Tis not that I am weary grown) | |
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| Against Constancy (Tell me no more of constancy) | |
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| Song (early version) (How happy, Chloris, were they free) | |
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| To a Lady in a Letter (final version) (Such perfect bliss, fair Chloris, we) | |
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| Song (Leave this gaudy gilded stage) | |
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| The Fall (How blest was the created state) | |
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| The Mistress (An age in her embraces passed) | |
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| A Song (Absent from thee, I languish still) | |
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| A Song of a Young Lady to Her Ancient Lover (Ancient person, for whom I) | |
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| Love and Life (All my past life is mine no more) | |
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| Epilogue to "Love in the Dark," As It Was Spoke by Mr. Haines (As charms are nonsense, nonsense seems a charm) | |
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| A Satyr against Reason and Mankind (Were I who to my cost already am) | |
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| Fragment (What vain, unnecessary things are men) | |
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| A Letter from Artemisia in the Town to Chloe in the Country (Chloe, in verse by your command I write) | |
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| A Very Heroical Epistle in Answer to Ephelia (If you're deceived, it is not by my cheat) | |
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| The Disabled Debauchee (As some brave admiral, in former war) | |
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| Upon Nothing (Nothing! thou elder brother even to Shade) | |
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| An Allusion to Horace, the Tenth Satyr of the First Book (Well, sir, 'tis granted I said Dryden's rhymes) | |
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| Disillusionment and Death (1676-1680) | |
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| Dialogue (When to the King I bid good morrow) | |
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| To the Postboy (Son of a whore, God damn you! can you tell) | |
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| On the Supposed Author of a Late Poem in Defence of Satyr (To rack and torture thy unmeaning brain) | |
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| Impromptu on Charles II (God bless our good and gracious King) | |
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| Impromptu on the English Court (Here's Monmouth the witty) | |
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| The Mock Song (I swive as well as others do) | |
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| On Cary Frazier (Her father gave her dildoes six) | |
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| On Mrs. Willis (Against the charms our ballocks have) | |
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| Song (By all love's soft, yet mighty powers) | |
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| Epilogue to "Circe" (Some few, from wit, have this true maxim got) | |
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| On Poet Ninny (Crushed by that just contempt his follies bring) | |
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| My Lord All-Pride (Bursting with pride, the loathed impostume swells) | |
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| An Epistolary Essay from M.G. to O.B. upon Their Mutual Poems (Dear friend, I hear this town does so abound) | |
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| Epigram on Thomas Otway (To form a plot) | |
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| Answer to a Paper of Verses Sent Him by Lady Betty Felton and Taken out of the Translation of Ovid's "Epistles," 1680 (What strange surprise to meet such words as these) | |
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| A Translation from Seneca's "Troades," Act II, Chorus (After death nothing is, and nothing, death) | |
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| Poems Possibly by Rochester | |
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| To His Sacred Majesty, on His Restoration in the Year 1660 (Virtue's triumphant shrine! who dost engage) | |
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| In Obitum Serenissimae Mariae Principis Arausionensis (Impia blasphemi sileant convitia vulgi) | |
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| To Her Sacred Majesty, the Queen Mother, on the Death of Mary, Princess of Orange (Respite, great Queen, your just and hasty fears) | |
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| A Rodomontade on His Cruel Mistress (Trust not that thing called woman: she is worse) | |
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| Against Marriage (Out of mere love and arrant devotion) | |
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| A Song (Injurious charmer of my vanquished heart) | |
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| Epigram on Samuel Pordage (Poet, whoe'er thou art, God damn thee) | |
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| On Rome's Pardons (If Rome can pardon sins, as Romans hold) | |
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| Works Cited by Cue Titles in the Notes | |
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| Notes on the Texts, Authorship, and Dates of the Poems | |
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| First-Line List of Poems Omitted from This Edition | |
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| Indexes | |
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| First-Line Index to the Poems | |
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| Index of Persons | |