The good Lady Sandys burst into a laughter
To see how the ballocks came wobbling after,
And had not their weight retarded their foe,
Indeed't had gone hard with Signior Dildo.
Had the obscene publications squad been around in the 17th century it would almost certainly have raided the study of John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester, wit, libertine, and author of some of the filthiest verses composed in English.
So it is a little surprising to find that a senior police officer serving with HM inspectorate of constabulary is one of Britain's leading experts on the life and works of Rochester, a darling of the Restoration court of Charles II.
Chief Superintendent Nick Fisher, of the Greater Manchester police, a force more familiar with killers than poets, has organised a Rochester festival, staged a conference on his life and work, co-edited an edition of settings of his songs, and edited a collection of academic essays.
Now he has written the libretto for a chamber opera based on the last weeks of Rochester's life which will be given its first performance in Cardiff on Thursday, and further performances in Birmingham later this month.
The music for That Second Bottle is by the Dutch composer Hans Kox, whose fourth symphony has just been premiered by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.
Mr Fisher stumbled on Rochester while he was at Newcastle University in the 60s and fell for his "unique combination of delightful love lyrics, savage satires and comically obscene poems".
"I had never really registered him before, and then suddenly found that there was a poet who used in his poetry these rude words which I had only ever heard spoken," he said. "I thought that was both interesting and anti-establishment.
"Rochester was a rebel. He rebelled against the king, authority and society. When you are a teenager at university, you are doing your own bit of rebelling or testing boundaries."
Becoming an establishment figure himself has not cost him his passion for the poet. He earned a master's degree on Rochester at Newcastle and has almost completed a PhD course at Leeds.
"His rude poems are very clever but his love poems are delightful. On top of that he wrote these biting satires. The combination of all that made him a most interesting person and I wanted to find out more about him."
The opera will be performed in the Bute Theatre, Cardiff, by postgraduate students from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, in a production by Michael McCarthy.
