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
George Darley was born in Dublin in December 1795 and died in London on 23 November 1846. He belongs among those gifted nineteenth-century writers whose lives complicate the comforting assumption that talent naturally finds its public. During his lifetime he was respected by a small number of discerning contemporaries, employed steadily enough in literary and educational work, and capable of producing poetry of extra…
“Fashionability is a kind of elevated vulgarity.”
Neighbourhood:
Irish Poets, Romantic Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Despair, Sorrow, Wonder
