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The Full Text of “Farewell, ungrateful traitor!”
1Farewell, ungrateful traitor!
2Farewell, my perjured swain
3Let never injured creature
4Believe a man again.
5The pleasure of possessing
6Surpasses all expressing,
7But 'tis too short a blessing,
8And love too long a pain.
9'Tis easy to deceive us
10In pity of your pain;
11But when we love, you leave us
12To rail at you in vain.
13Before we have descried it,
14There is no bliss beside it,
15But she, that once has tried it,
16Will never love again.
17The passion you pretended
18Was only to obtain;
19But once the charm is ended,
20The charmer you disdain.
21Your love by ours we measure
22Till we have lost our treasure;
23But dying is a pleasure
24When living is a pain.
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“Farewell, ungrateful traitor!” Introduction
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"Farewell, ungrateful traitor!" is a song from John Dryden's 1681 play The Spanish Friar. In this ferocious poem, a speaker laments that her lover has abandoned her, and swears she'll never love again. Men are liars who lose interest in you as soon as you fall for them, she says bitterly, and the pleasures of love come at a terrible cost. But there's rueful humor in this lament as well as pain; the poem's jaded, witty tone fits right into the traditions of the Restoration comedy, a 17th-century theatrical movement of which Dryden was a well-known master.
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“Farewell, ungrateful traitor!” Summary
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Goodbye, you thankless betrayer! Goodbye, my lying lover. May no heartbroken woman ever trust a man again. Sex is delightful beyond words, but it's over far too quickly—and love hurts for so long that the fun part isn't even worth it.
It's easy for you men to trick women into feeling sorry for you when you tell us you're in agony over us. But as soon as we really fall in love with you, you dump us, leaving us to futilely scold you. Before we women have experienced love first-hand, we think it's the best thing in the whole world. But the woman who's actually been through a love affair will want to give love up forever.
The adoration you faked was just your way of getting what you wanted from me. But the instant that you men lose interest in a woman, you scorn her. We women imagine that men's love for us is as strong as ours for them, and give up our hearts and our virginity for its sake. We're left wishing we were dead: life holds only suffering for us once our hearts are broken.
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“Farewell, ungrateful traitor!” Themes
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The Faithlessness of Men
“Farewell, ungrateful traitor!” is a lament over male dishonesty in love. The female speaker of this song bids a sorrowful farewell to both the lover who has betrayed her and to love itself. It’s not just this one man who’s faithless, she sings, but all men: men are always professing eternal love, then losing interest as soon as the object of their affections loves them back. Women, in contrast, feel genuine love, and genuine pain when they’re betrayed. Men’s faithlessness thus makes love a terrible burden for women: the speaker’s own experience is just one example among many, and she warns that women should all forswear men if they know what’s good for them.
The speaker’s farewell to her faithless lover moves quickly from the personal to the general: it’s not just her lover who’s a disloyal jerk, she argues, but all men. Bidding “farewell” to her “perjured swain” (that is, her lying boyfriend), she goes on: “Let never injured creature / Believe a man again.” In other words, in her view, her experience is just one example of a hard, cold, universal truth: all men are liars. They only “pretend[]” (or fake) their passion to get what they want, and “disdain” (or scorn) the women they woo as soon as those women give in to them.
The problem here isn’t just that men are traitors, but that women are sincere—and that love is tempting. The “pleasure of possessing” (that is, the joy of sex and romance) is great: no “bliss” can possibly compare with it. But women, the speaker warns, should resist love’s enticements: they’re “too short a blessing” to make up for the inevitable pain of betrayal. Even “dying is a pleasure” compared to the agony of life when one’s heart is broken. Love, this jaded speaker concludes, is just too big a risk for women: men will always betray women’s sincere feelings.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Farewell, ungrateful traitor!”
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Lines 1-4
Farewell, ungrateful traitor!
Farewell, my perjured swain
Let never injured creature
Believe a man again."Farewell, ungrateful traitor!" begins with an abrupt ending. In no uncertain terms, a female speaker tells her dishonest boyfriend that she's done with him for good.
In fact, she says so twice:
Farewell, ungrateful traitor!
Farewell, my perjured swainHer anaphora on the word "farewell" here makes her point crystal clear: this "perjured swain" (or lying lover) can go ahead and get out of here, and he shouldn't let the door hit him on his way out.
While this speaker is obviously furious, she's also heartbroken. If her "swain" is a "traitor," her "farewell" comes after he's already betrayed her trust and, it's implied, moved on with someone else. He's said "farewell" to her before she can say goodbye to him.
Having begun with a direct apostrophe to her cheating lover, the speaker suddenly broadens her critique. It's not just her "perjured swain" who's a liar and a cheater, she says: it's every man in the world. No "injured creature"—that is, no betrayed woman—should ever "Believe a man again" if she knows what's good for her. In other words: this is going to be a poem not just about how one man cheated on or abandoned one woman, but about how every man is a no-good, lying jerk. This is the furious lament of a woman in pain.
These opening lines establish the poem's meter as a mixture of iambic tetrameter and trimeter (that is, lines of either four or three iambs, metrical feet that follow a da-DUM rhythm). Take lines 1-2:
Farewell, | ungrate- | ful trai- | tor!
Farewell, | my per- | jured swainThis short, bouncy rhythm makes the lines feel both energetic and curt. But, as readers can see above, the first line isn't actually full tetrameter: line 1, like all the odd-numbered lines in the poem is, catalectic, which just means that it's missing its final expressed stressed beat. This adds playful variation to the poem's rhythm.
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Lines 5-8
The pleasure of possessing
Surpasses all expressing,
But 'tis too short a blessing,
And love too long a pain.
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Lines 9-12
'Tis easy to deceive us
In pity of your pain;
But when we love, you leave us
To rail at you in vain. -
Lines 13-16
Before we have descried it,
There is no bliss beside it,
But she, that once has tried it,
Will never love again. -
Lines 17-20
The passion you pretended
Was only to obtain;
But once the charm is ended,
The charmer you disdain. -
Lines 21-24
Your love by ours we measure
Till we have lost our treasure;
But dying is a pleasure
When living is a pain.
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“Farewell, ungrateful traitor!” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
The alliteration in "Farewell, ungrateful traitor!" evokes the scorn and rage in the speaker's voice—but also helps to give the poem its music.
The most common alliterative sound here is a plosive /p/: it turns up in "The pleasure of possessing," "Surpasses all expressing" (which can be considered alliterative because the shared sound falls at the start of a stressed syllable), "In pity of your pain," "The passion you pretended"—and, perhaps most emphatically, in the last two lines:
But dying is a pleasure
When living is a pain.These repeated /p/ sounds make it sound as if the furious speaker is practically spitting her words. But they also draw attention the way love's joys turn to suffering: notice that the words "pleasure" and "pain" turn up more than once, and the /p/ sounds around them make them stand out even more.
Elsewhere, though, alliterative sounds give the poem some beauty. After all, this poem appears as a musical interlude in a play: it's meant to be sung, and its sounds are melodious as well as meaningful. For instance, the liquid /l/ in "when we love, you leave us" and the light /t/ of "Till we have lost our treasure" just plain sound good. These musical sounds keep this poem's tone from getting too dark: alliteration makes the speaker's voice sound controlled and elegant, not just furious.
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Assonance
Unlock all 129 words of this analysis of Assonance in “Farewell, ungrateful traitor!,” and get the poetic device analyses for every poem we cover.
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Apostrophe
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End-Stopped Line
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Repetition
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Pun
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Metaphor
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“Farewell, ungrateful traitor!” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Perjured
- Swain
- Injured
- Possessing
- Surpasses all expressing
- Rail
- Descried
- Pretended
- Obtain
Perjured-
Caught out in a lie.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Farewell, ungrateful traitor!”
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Form
"Farewell, ungrateful traitor!" is broken into three octaves, or eight-line stanzas. Each of these octaves divides into two parts: the first four lines describe terrible male behavior, and the last four lines describe the effect that behavior has on women. The rhyme scheme between these sections differs, and they can be thought of as two quatrains. (See the Rhyme Scheme section for more on the way rhyme marks this division out.)
This poem is meant to be sung. In the play it appears in, The Spanish Friar, it's a musical interlude, a little break from the action. Its even, balanced shape reflects those musical origins: this scorned woman's lament might be furious, but it's also melodious.
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Meter
"Farewell, ungrateful traitor!" uses a steady pattern of iambic trimeter throughout. That means that each line is built from three iambs, metrical feet that follow a da-DUM stress pattern. Here's how that looks in context:
Farewell, | ungrate- | ful traitor!
Farewell, | my per- | jured swainReaders might notice that the first line here has an extra unstressed syllable tacked onto the end. That's called a feminine ending, and a lot of the lines in this poem use them. While feminine endings turn up in plenty of iambic poetry, it's possible that Dryden is making a little poet's joke here: after all, this poem, in which a heartbroken woman swears off men forever, is very much a "feminine ending." (Because of that extra syllable, some readers might characterize the odd-numbered lines here as being iambic tetrameter with catalexis. That just means that there are four iambs per line, but the last foot is missing its final syllable. Whatever you call it, the feel is the same!)
Short trimeter lines suit the poem's tone: they feel curt and snappy, making it clear that this speaker is really telling her lying lover off. There's also plenty of energy in the iambs here: those iambic da-DUMs bounce right along, making this poem feel like a curiously upbeat expression of rage and disgust. The speaker might be hurt, but the meter here suggests she's also enjoying the thrill of telling her lover exactly what she thinks of him (and of men in general).
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Rhyme Scheme
The rhyme scheme in each stanza of "Farewell, ungrateful traitor!" runs like this:
ABABCCCB
There's a little variation in the first stanza, where the two A rhymes ("traitor" and "creature") don't perfectly match (they're slant rhymes)—but this pattern basically holds firm throughout.
The movement of rhymes here works a lot like the setup and punchline of a grim joke—or the windup to an actual punch! The alternating ABAB section in the first part of each stanza, the setup, describes terrible male behavior; the insistent CCCB section, the payoff, describes how women suffer from that behavior. The B rhyme returns at the end of each stanza to really drive the speaker's point home.
Readers might notice that those B rhymes stay exactly the same across the whole poem: the B rhyme is always on an /ain/ sound, and the rhyme words "pain" and "again" even repeat. (Note that in Dryden's time and place, "again" and "pain" would have been a perfect rhyme: "again" was pronounced "agayn," not "agehn.") That repetition evokes the speaker's fury and suffering. Her "swain" (or boyfriend) has brought her so much "pain" that it's "vain" to try to turn away from it even in her rhymes.
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“Farewell, ungrateful traitor!” Speaker
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In the context of The Spanish Friar (the play it comes from), this poem is attributed to Olympia, a betrayed woman from the poet Ariosto's famous romance Orlando Furioso. But really, the speaker here could be any "injured creature": any woman who's suffered heartbreak at the hands of a deceitful man.
The speaker here sees herself as a spokesperson for all scorned women. Recently abandoned by a lying lover, she hotly defends the sincerity of women's feelings in contrast with the fickleness of men's. Her experience, she feels, is evidence of a wider truth: men are liars who manipulate women for the sake of their own sexual satisfaction.
This speaker is without question furious and hurt, but there's also a sparkle of pride and even humor in her tone here. There's female solidarity in this poem, not just outrage against men: in decrying "deceivers," this speaker stands with every betrayed woman. (And she's in good company: there's a famous song that has a lot in common with this one in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing.) And she still has it in her to make a dirty joke at the end of the poem: besides its obvious literal meaning, "dying" can mean "having an orgasm."
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“Farewell, ungrateful traitor!” Setting
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"Farewell, ungrateful traitor!" comes from a play set in crusader-era Spain, but it's attributed to a character from Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, an epic poem set in crusader-era Italy. In other words, this song has a doubly romantic setting: it's two layers deep in a glamorized version of medieval Europe, as imagined by a late-17th-century English writer.
But the point the speaker is making here isn't anchored to the middle ages, or to the 17th century, or to any time. In her view, men were liars, are liars, and always will be liars.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Farewell, ungrateful traitor!”
Literary Context
John Dryden wrote The Spanish Friar (the play that "Farewell, ungrateful traitor!" comes from) in 1681, at the height of his fame and success. Dryden was a popular writer during the Restoration era, when King Charles II returned to the English throne in 1660 after years in exile. For his poems in praise of English greatness and the restored king, Dryden was appointed the first Poet Laureate, a ceremonial position that endures to this day.
Dryden was known as much as a playwright as a poet, and was one of the major figures in Restoration comedy, among writers like William Wycherley and William Congreve. This was a period marked by witty, elegant plays about high society; Dryden's Marriage a la Mode is one particularly famous example. But The Spanish Friar is a different flavor of play, a stormy tragicomedy of double-crossings and corrupt monks. "Farewell, ungrateful traitor!" appears as a musical interlude in this play, and its words get attributed to a character from Orlando Furioso, a famous romance by the Italian Renaissance poet Ariosto.
As a stand-alone poem, "Farewell, ungrateful traitor!" fits into a long tradition of songs criticizing men for their treachery and fickleness. One famous example is "Sigh no more, ladies," a song from Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing that advises women to stop mourning over unfaithful men. In both of these instances, a male writer speaks on behalf of (or in the voice of) heartbroken ladies—but perhaps also subtly makes excuses for men's bad behavior, suggesting that betraying women is just what men do.
Historical Context
King Charles II returned to the English throne in 1660, after a period known as the Interregnum. Back in 1649, forces led by the Puritan Oliver Cromwell had deposed (and beheaded) Charles II's father Charles I—an earthshaking event in a country that had been used to seeing kings as chosen by God. The younger Charles escaped to Europe, where he lived in exile. The government that Cromwell subsequently installed, known as the Protectorate, proved unstable and unpopular, and the country eventually welcomed Charles II back from his exile with relief.
Puritans like Cromwell saw the arts as corrupting and blasphemous, and Cromwell's government had shut down theaters, smashed religious statues, and gutted ancient churches in its pursuit of moral purity. Charles II, on the other hand, loved and championed the arts, both sincerely and for canny political reasons: it turns out that people enjoy fun, and the king who provides entertainment is likely to be more popular than the "Protector" who forbids it.
One of Charles' smartest moves was to reopen the theaters, and to champion exciting theatrical innovations—like actresses. Before the Restoration, women weren't allowed on stage; all the women in Shakespeare's plays, for instance, would originally have been played by male actors. Charles II didn't just encourage women to act, he officially decreed that women's roles should be played by "their natural performers" if the theaters wanted to reopen! To further demonstrate his approval of women on stage, Charles even had a not-very-well-concealed affair with a famous actress, Nell Gwyn.
Dryden thus fits into an artistic and political scene full of new freedoms. As Poet Laureate to a handsome, popular, and rather libertine king, he found himself at the head of an exciting and lively art world—so much so that the period when he was writing is still sometimes known as the "Age of Dryden."
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More “Farewell, ungrateful traitor!” Resources
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External Resources
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The Spanish Friar — Read this song in the context of the play it came from: The Spanish Friar, a tale of deception and double-crossing.
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Dryden's Life and Work — Read a short biography of Dryden at the Poetry Foundation's website.
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The Poem Aloud — Hear the poem read out loud.
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Dryden's Laureateship — Read about a rediscovered portrait of Dryden—and his role as the first English Poet Laureate.
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The Poem Set to Music — Listen to the poem set to a jaunty melody.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by John Dryden
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