Although a first authorized published edition of Mac Flecknoe; or, A satyr upon the True-Blue-Protestant Poet, T.S. by John Dryden appeared in Miscellaney Poems in 1684, it had been circulated in unapproved versions since 1682. Critics cannot pinpoint the year… Read More ›
John Milton had known Edward King at Cambridge and wrote Lycidas (1638) as an elegy for his friend’s death. When word arrived that King had drowned in the Irish Sea returning to Dublin in 1637, his many friends were strongly… Read More ›
Scholars of the works of John Donne continue the search for various elements in his poetry to aid in the dating of their creation and even in the ways to refer to the poems. As Donne did not title his… Read More ›
John Dryden wrote The Hind and the Panther (1687) in order to contribute to an ongoing dispute between Protestant and Catholic factions. While his exact date of conversion from devotion to the Church of England to Catholicism remains uncertain, it… Read More ›
John Donne enforced a tight structure on his song Go and Catch a Falling Star (1630), with three stanzas each containing sestets with a rhyme scheme of ababcc and concluding with a rhyming triplet. That controlled format contrasts with the… Read More ›
Most critics agree that John Donne wrote The Flea during his youth, before becoming an ordained minister. It was first published as part of Songs and Sonnets in a posthumous collection that appeared in 1630, 1635, 1650, and 1669. As… Read More ›
By the time Alexander Pope chose to publish his An Essay on Man (1734), he had received thorough and undeserved criticism from the poetasters, or “dunces,” whose activities he so often correctly lambasted, most notably in The Dunciad (1723). Still… Read More ›
Alexander Pope wrote An Essay on Criticism (1711) at an early age yet created a work worthy of a far more experienced hand. He involves himself in the ongoing dispute between the values of the traditional as compared to the… Read More ›
Alexander Pope originally published Epistle to a Young Lady in 1712. His subject may have been imaginary or real, but in 1735 he changed the poem’s title to reference his dear friend, Martha Blount: Epistle to Miss Blount. They had… Read More ›
Alexander Pope spent some time considering the choice of form for his late-career rebuttal of those who had most demeaned him in print. He selected a poetic letter, Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot (1734), which later critics would deem a rhetorical… Read More ›
Thomas Gray may have begun writing Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard as early as 1746. He discarded four stanzas of an early version, which were probably read by his friend Horace Walpole, and planned to title the work simply… Read More ›
Alexander Pope has long been acknowledged as one of the leading satirists of his age. Adopting the 18th-century belief that the “lash” of satire could lead to change, he applied that lash liberally in various works targeting those who established… Read More ›
When Oliver Goldsmith wrote his 431-line poem in rhyming couplets The Deserted Village (1770), he exhibited the talent for shrewd observation and scene for which he had gained a reputation. He also imbued this idealization of English rural life with… Read More ›
While discussion continues over the order in which John Donne wrote the individual poems that compose his Holy Sonnets, the critic Helen Gardner has argued convincingly that Death Be Not Proud was published in 1633. Structured as a variant of… Read More ›
Critics basically agree to divide John Donne’s writing into two groups related to his life stages, his romantic, or love, poetry in the stage dating prior to 1615, and the spiritual poetry emanating from the time of his ordination in… Read More ›
John Dryden wrote his second ode (1697) in celebration of St. Cecilia’s Day, Alexander’s Feast; Or the Power of Music, 10 years after his first tribute, A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day. Set to music by Jeremiah Clarke, it became… Read More ›
With Annus Mirabilis: The Year of Wonders, 1666 John Dryden published his first major nondramatic poem, and his last major poem utilizing the heroic quatrain format. In addition to its subtitle, The Year of Wonders, 1666, the work contained an… Read More ›
George Herbert wrote five “Affliction” poems, all contained in his collection The Temple. The first of the series, while not essentially autobiographical, did grow from Herbert’s life and experiences. While the poem begins with positive aspects of the speaker’s life,… Read More ›
John Dryden’s publication of Absalom and Achitophel (1681) had a specific political motivation. He wrote the poem during the threat of revolution in England, connected to the so-called Popish plot and the move to exclude the reigning King Charles II’s… Read More ›
When Mabel Loomis Todd published this poem in the 1890 Poems under the rubric of nature poems, she set a precedent that would be followed by editors for more than half a century. Todd may have seen it as a… Read More ›