Clement Clarke Moore was born in New York City on 15 July 1779, into a family whose standing joined religious authority, learning, landholding, and old New York connections. He died on 10 July 1863, five days before his eighty-fourth birthday, having become a respected scholar, educator, churchman, landowner, and local civic figure. Yet history has remembered him overwhelmingly for a poem of fifty-six lines: “A Visit…
“It was written at the request of my children, and for their amusement, on Christmas Eve, 1822.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Children's Verse, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Joy, Tenderness
Edgar Albert Guest was born in Birmingham, England, on 20 August 1881, and died in Detroit, Michigan, on 5 August 1959, fifteen days before his seventy-eighth birthday. During much of his long life, he was among the most familiar poets in the United States. His name appeared daily in newspapers, his verses were memorized in schools and recited at civic meetings, and his books sold in quantities that many more critica…
“We were not to be one hundred per cent happy. No one ever is.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Children's Verse, Edwardian Poets, Light Verse Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Tenderness, Peace
