On a cold November morning in 1861, Julia Ward Howe awoke in her room at Willard's Hotel in Washington, D.C., with verses forming in her mind. She had visited Union Army camps the previous day, witnessing thousands of soldiers preparing for battle while singing "John Brown's Body." Now, in the pre-dawn darkness, words came to her with unusual clarity and force. Rising quietly so as not to disturb her sleeping childre…
“We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Political Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Sorrow, Spirituality
John Keble was born on 25 April 1792 at Fairford in Gloucestershire, into a household where religion, learning, family affection, and the rhythms of rural England were closely joined. He would become one of the most widely read poets of nineteenth-century Britain, a distinguished Oxford scholar, a parish priest of unusual devotion, and a formative figure in the movement that sought to recover the Catholic and sacrame…
“Once you make up your mind never to stand waiting and hesitating when your conscience tells you what you ought to do, and you have got the key to every blessing that a sinner can reasonably hope for.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Spirituality