Absent From Thee I Languish Still by John Wilmot, the 2nd Earl of Rochester (1 April 1647 -- 26 July 1680), was an English poet, and a wit of King Charles II's court. Rochester's life was divided between domesticity in the country and a riotous existence at court, where he was renowned for drunkenness, vivacious conversation, and "extravagant frolics" as part of the Merry Gang. Rochester said that, "For five years together he was continually Drunk and not perfectly Master of himself which led him to do many wild and unaccountable things." Rochester's writings were at once admired and infamous. A Satyr Against Mankind (1675), one of the few poems he published (in a broadside in 1679) is a scathing denunciation of rationalism and optimism that contrasts human perfidy with animal wisdom.

The majority of his poetry was not published under his name until after his death. Because most of his poems circulated only in manuscript form during his lifetime, it is likely that much of his writing does not survive. By the 1750s, Rochester's reputation suffered as the liberality of the Restoration era subsided; Samuel Johnson regarded him as a worthless and dissolute rake. Andrew Marvell described him as "the best English satirist", and he is generally considered to be the most considerable poet and the most learned among the Restoration wits...

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