Henry Vaughan, born on 17 April 1621 and buried on 23 April 1695, was one of the most distinctive English-language poets of the seventeenth century: a Welsh country gentleman, Royalist, medical practitioner, translator, religious writer, and visionary poet whose work transformed private devotion into startling images of light, landscape, childhood, death, and eternity. He is usually grouped with the metaphysical poet…
“He that writes idle books, makes for himself another body, in which he always lives, and sins—after death—as fast and as foul as ever he did in his life.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Metaphysical Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Welsh Poets
Emotional landscape: Despair, Spirituality, Longing
William Strode, baptized on 11 January 1602/3 and dead by 1645, belonged to that abundant but still partly shadowed generation of English writers who made the early seventeenth century one of the most inventive periods in the history of English poetry. He was a clergyman, Oxford academic, university orator, court entertainer, dramatist, and lyric poet. In each role he displayed verbal ease, learning, and an appetite…
Neighbourhood:
Cavalier Poets, Devotional Poets, Light Verse Poets, Love Poets, Metaphysical Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Wonder, Sorrow
