Robert Herrick was born in London on 24 August 1591 and died at Dean Prior in Devon on 15 October 1674. He is remembered as one of the supreme lyric poets of seventeenth-century England: a writer capable of making a four-line epigram feel as complete as a polished jewel, and of making flowers, ribbons, country festivals, kisses, bells, tears, and prayer seem charged with extraordinary significance. His poetry is ofte…
“The soul's a thing immortal, and therefore must not be enslaved to mortal things.”
Neighbourhood:
Cavalier Poets, Devotional Poets, Love Poets, Metaphysical Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow
George Wither was born on 11 June 1588 at Bentworth, near Alton in Hampshire, and died on 2 May 1667 in London. His long life stretched across one of the most violently transformative periods in English history: the last years of Elizabeth I, the reigns of James I and Charles I, the Civil Wars, the execution of a king, the Commonwealth and Protectorate, and the Restoration of Charles II. Few English poets lived so fu…
Neighbourhood:
Cavalier Poets, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Love Poets, Metaphysical Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Despair
