Thomas Traherne, born about 1636 or 1637 and dead on 27 September 1674, was an Anglican priest, theologian, prose writer, and poet whose reputation rests on work that scarcely anyone in his own lifetime knew existed. He published only a little, lived without public literary renown, and died before his fortieth birthday. Yet the manuscripts he left behind, overlooked for more than two centuries, eventually revealed on…
“The corn was orient and immortal wheat which never should be reaped nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Metaphysical Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Peace, Wonder
Katherine Philips, born Katherine Fowler on 1 January 1632 and dead at only thirty-two on 22 June 1664, achieved a distinction that would have seemed improbable in the unsettled England of her youth: she became a celebrated poet while she was still alive, and she did so as a woman writing in forms and subjects conventionally claimed by men. Known to her readers and friends as “Orinda,” Philips fashioned poems of frie…
“I find too there are few Friendships in the World Marriage-Proof; especially when the Person our Friend marries has not a Soul particularly capable of the Tenderness of that Endearment. We may generally conclude the Marriage of a Friend to be the Funeral of a Friendship.”
Neighbourhood:
LGBTQ+ Poets, Restoration Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Spirituality, Wonder
