1 live poem · Old English
In the flickering candlelight of a Northumbrian monastery, a young boy bent over his wax tablet, carefully forming Latin letters under the watchful eye of his monastic teachers. This child, taken from his family at age seven and given to the abbey of Wearmouth, would grow to become one of medieval Europe's most luminous intellects. Bede the Venerable, born around 673 in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria and dyin…
“The present life of man, O king, seems to me, in comparison with that time of which we have no knowledge, like the swift flight of a sparrow through the room.”
Neighbourhood:
Classical & Ancient Poets, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Medieval Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Sorrow
Henry King, born on 16 January 1592 and dead on 30 September 1669, lived a life shaped by inherited ecclesiastical ambition, private bereavement, literary friendship, civil conflict, and religious restoration. He is remembered chiefly as the author of “The Exequy,” one of the most moving elegies in seventeenth-century English poetry, but that single poem can obscure the breadth of his career. King was a clergyman, ro…
Neighbourhood:
Cavalier Poets, Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Metaphysical Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Despair
