Alfred Noyes was born on 16 September 1880 in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, and died on 25 June 1958 at his home on the Isle of Wight. During the first decades of the twentieth century he was among the best-known English poets in the world: a writer whose books sold widely, whose recitations drew large audiences, and whose poems entered schools, anthologies, music halls, and family memory. He was celebrated above all…
“Science has accomplished marvels for the material comforts of mankind, but it has been divorced from philosophy and it has misled the world by suggesting that the greater values can be produced by the less.”
Neighbourhood:
Edwardian Poets, Folk & Ballad Poets, Georgian Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Wonder, Tenderness
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