Why John Wilmot’s Dirty Poems Are Actually Good October 16, 2012: John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, wrote some seriously smutty verse back in the 1600s; take these lines from his poem, "The Maidenhead": Have you not in a chimney seen A sullen faggot wet and green, How coyly it receives the heat, And at both ends does fume and sweat? So fares it with the harmless maid When first upon her back [...] by Harriet Staff