In the gentle folds of Dorset's Blackmore Vale, where the River Stour meanders through meadows fringed with ancient oaks and the air hums with the songs of larks and the lowing of cattle, a voice arose that would forever capture the heartbeat of rural England. William Barnes, born on February 22, 1801, at Rushay Farm in the hamlet of Bagber near Sturminster Newton, emerged from humble farming stock to become one of t…
“It is rich in humour, strong in raillery and hyperbole, and altogether as fit a vehicle of rustic feeling and thought, as the Doric is found in the Idyllia of Theocritus.”
Neighbourhood:
Folk & Ballad Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Peace, Joy, Tenderness
William Stanley Beaumont Braithwaite entered the world on December 6, 1878, in Boston, Massachusetts, a city pulsing with literary ambition and the lingering echoes of abolitionist fervor. He departed it on June 8, 1962, at his home on Edgecombe Avenue in Harlem, New York, after a brief illness, at the age of eighty-three. In the eighty-three years between those dates, Braithwaite forged a remarkable life as poet, cr…
“I suppose that any art may be considered American which conforms in expression to the ideals of the American people.”
Neighbourhood:
African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Love Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Wonder, Peace
