Accused of being unfaithful, most lovers in poetry protest their innocence. The speaker of John Wilmot's "Love and Life" does something cleverer: he changes the rules of time until the accusation no longer makes sense. His past is gone, his future doesn't exist yet, and the only thing he can truly offer Phyllis is the present moment. That he does offer, and he suggests she should be grateful. Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester, wrote in the Restoration court world of Charles II and had a reputation for provocative, libertine verse, and the poem's mix of charm and cheek fits that reputation.
The poem is built like a small argument. Stanza one disposes of the past: "All my past life is mine no more." The hours have "flown," and what remains is only a set of "transitory dreams" kept "by memory alone." Stanza two disposes of the future with a neat piece of reasoning: "The time that is to come is not; / How can it then be mine?" What is left is "the present moment," which he hands to Phyllis. By the third stanza the opening word "Then" signals a conclusion. Since he has nothing else to give, she should stop complaining about "inconstancy, / False hearts, and broken vows."
The form helps the logic feel tidy. Each stanza has five lines rhymed ABAAB (more / gone / o'er / store / alone), and each follows the same pattern of line length: three longer lines of eight syllables are interrupted by shorter, six-syllable lines in second and fifth place. The short lines work like small clicks of a lock. "By memory alone," "Phyllis, is only thine," and "'Tis all that Heav'n allows" are all closing statements that sound final and unarguable. The B-rhymes also carry the argument. "Mine" in line 2 of stanza two is answered by "thine" in line 5, so the rhyme moves possession from speaker to lover in the space of a stanza.
That vocabulary of ownership runs through the whole poem. The past is "kept in store," like goods in a warehouse. The present is his "lot," a word meaning both his share and his fate, and it is something "got," as though acquired. The phrase "as fast as it is got" is quietly funny. He never actually holds the present, because it passes straight through his hands to Phyllis. His generosity therefore costs him nothing, and the gift is no more than a fact about everyone's life. Meanwhile time is made physical in the "flying hours," which seem to have wings, and in dreams that have been "giv'n o'er," abandoned like a task.
The last stanza is where the tone becomes most slippery. The accusation words, "inconstancy," "false hearts," "broken vows," are heavy and moral, and he waves them away with a tiny word: "If I, by miracle, can be / This live-long minute true to thee." "Miracle" makes faithfulness sound almost supernatural, and "live-long minute" twists the familiar "livelong day," squeezing a lifetime of devotion into sixty seconds. The word "live" also ties back to the title, since for this speaker love and life are the same thing, and both exist only now. Even the final blame is shifted upward. It is not he who limits his loyalty but "Heav'n," which "allows" only this much. The reader can't quite tell whether he is sincere, teasing, or simply excusing himself.
That uncertainty is what makes the poem worth reading. Love poetry often promises forever, and this poem openly refuses to. It plays with the old idea of seizing the present moment, but instead of urging a lover to enjoy time before it runs out, it uses time as an alibi. The most unsettling part is that his premises are hard to dispute. The past really is only memory, and the future really hasn't happened. The conclusion he draws from them is a dodge, but it is a dodge built from true statements, and it still makes the reader pause. In twenty-odd lines of simple words and a regular pattern, Wilmot makes a flirtation, a piece of philosophy and a defence of unfaithfulness all sound equally plausible, and leaves it to us to decide which of them we believe.