This essay arises primarily out of the experience of discussing Rochester's work with readers who possess plenty of ‘Youth, Fire, Wit and Discernment’, namely, fascinated but perplexed undergraduates. How does Rochester, they ask, achieve that astonishing rational directness, that surprisingly delicate lyric grace? Why does he so regularly challenge these, and his readers, with cynicism and obscenity? Is his wit sharpened in anger or love? Is it concerned or dispassionate? Is there a consistent perspective underlying and shaping the variety of poetic masks worn in and by the texts? More particularly, as a male author did he regard the human female with special distaste, or does the sometimes brutal attention given to her indicate attraction? How are human relations, Rochester-style, negotiated? And how are readers' relations and reactions to his texts to be understood and built upon?

This range of questions, adequate answers to which would fill a book, will be focused for the next few pages on just one lyric by Rochester, the one which has caused most impassioned disagreement and bewildered interest among my students- his ‘Song of a Young Lady to her Ancient Lover’. The lyric raises issues of voice, gender, experience, wit, art and compassion; a close look at it may help to suggest ways of responding to Rochester's work and to late-twentieth-century readers' dilemmas concerning it.