Alexander Pope, born on 21 May 1688 and dead on 30 May 1744, was the supreme English poet of the Augustan age and one of the most technically accomplished writers in the language. His verse made the heroic couplet seem at once inevitable, conversational, polished, and inexhaustibly flexible. In his best work, a pair of rhyming pentameter lines can carry an argument, a joke, a moral judgment, a portrait, a burst of in…
“I writ because it amused me; I corrected because it was as pleasant to me to correct as to write; and I publish'd because I was told I might please such as it was a credit to please.”
Neighbourhood:
Augustan Poets, Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Light Verse Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Peace, Wonder
Christopher Smart was born on 11 April 1722 at Fairlawne, the estate near Shipbourne in Kent where his father, Peter Smart, worked as steward to the Vane family. He died on 21 May 1771, not 1770 as has sometimes been reported, in London after a life marked by extraordinary accomplishment, recurrent distress, financial insecurity, and long periods of confinement. Few English poets of the eighteenth century have seemed…
“For flowers are peculiarly the poetry of Christ.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Metaphysical Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Tenderness, Joy
