As a body of work, the collected poems written by Lord Rochester show the journey of a man from reckless youth to thoughtful and sometimes repentant thirty-something who is old before his time chiefly because of the excesses of his youth. Without looking to see the date that he wrote each poem it is possible to see at what stage of his life Rochester wrote it. At the same time, the poems also illuminate the lifestyle of the members of King Henry VIII's court, who were profligate, devoid of impulse control and highly sexual. No surprise that many of the much-married king's courtiers passed away in their thirties from sexually transmitted diseases.
Lord Rochester's first poems demonstrate his youth; in one verse he swings from hopelessly in love with a woman to anger towards her for making him like her so much. He describes sexual encounters with multiple partners, some whom he knows, some he has paid for, some he has never met before their encounter and will likely never see again. Lord Rochester was probably a sex addict and his poems attest to this by describing forays around Europe, the sole purpose of which was to sleep with as many women as possible. Thus his twenties are a blur of one woman after another, about whom he would wax lyrical whilst at the same time complimenting himself on his own virility.
Towards the end of his twenties, Rochester finds that he is struggling with his sexual performance. His poems become angrier, blaming his partners for his struggles, and they also begin to veer on the side of the philosophical. He is beginning to look over his life and wonder about what will come next. He is still, in his own opinion, desirable, and a stud, but he is starting to become troubled by the fact that he is not able to get multiple erections in one night, and is not able to keep up with the women he is sleeping with.
Once he hits his thirties, Lord Rochester seems to resign himself to the fact that his more virile years are behind him, and begins to focus on philosophical and esoteric issues. This is a man looking back at his life and wondering if it has been enough to secure him a spot in the after life too. He is a more serious man, almost old before his time, although when taken in the context of the young age at which he died, the reflective turn that his writings took is similar to that of an elderly man looking back at his life as he knows it is coming to an end.
