John Dryden was England's first Poet Laureate (1668) and still remains an influential poet in the British literary canon. He has written some of the most valuable work that has emerged from Restoration England to the extent that the period was defined by many of his innovations.
Ah, How Sweet It Is to Love is a work by John Dryden that doesn’t fall under his conventional writing style, but is enigmatic and intriguing nonetheless. This poem conflates the themes of love, pain and time and fuses them into a beautiful whole. The poem essentially speaks of the beautiful pain that comes with love, and delineates the innocent love experienced in youth. It then seems to travel through time while at the same time comparing both love and time and appreciating their cosmic value and translating it for the reader to experience.
The poem is written in a lyrical way and Dryden uses his mastery of the English language to paint a beautiful picture of love, pain and time. He makes the poem a meditation on the power of love and how it can be a source of infinite joy, but can also be a source of great sorrow. Dryden also uses the poem to express his own musings on the relationship between love and time, and how one cannot exist without the other. He also speaks of how love will never be the same in different times and how it morphs and evolves as time passes. For example, he writes "Ah, how sweet it is to love, when youth and blood/Fervent and warm, the passions do infuse". This line speaks to the notion of how love is different in youth and how it changes as we age.
