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…
“Holy writing must strive (by all means) for perfection and true holiness, that a door may be opened to him in heaven.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Metaphysical Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Welsh Poets
Emotional landscape: Despair, Spirituality, Longing
Richard Jago, born on 1 October 1715 and dead on 8 May 1781, belonged to that abundant but often underappreciated company of eighteenth-century English writers whose poetry grew from local attachment, clerical discipline, sociability, and an attentive love of the natural world. He was never a literary revolutionary, nor did he seek the metropolitan celebrity attained by Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson, or his friend D…
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Georgian Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow