Famous Richards

[Solomwi]

Originally posted by Tuberski
Shut Yo' mouth........

But I'm talkin' 'bout Shaft...

[Guynemer]

And we can dig it.

[molly bloom]

Richard Crashaw, Metaphysical poet b.1613 (?) d. 1649:

AN EPITAPH UPON HUSBAND AND WIFE,

Who died and were buried together.


TO these whom death again did wed,
This grave's the second marriage-bed.
For though the hand of Fate could force
'Twixt soul and body a divorce,
It could not sever man and wife,
Because they both lived but one life.
Peace, good reader, do not weep ;
Peace, the lovers are asleep.
They, sweet turtles, folded lie
In the last knot that love could tie.
Let them sleep, let them sleep on,
Till the stormy night be gone,
And the eternal morrow dawn ;
Then the curtains will be drawn,
And they wake into a light
Whose day shall never die in night.

Richard Crashaw was the only son of William Crashaw, a puritan preacher in London who had officiated at the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots. In defiance of his father's views on religion, Crashaw went to a High Church college at Cambridge, Pembroke. He later became a fellow of Peterhouse College but was forced to resign because of his Roman Catholic leanings.

England was a dangerous place for Catholic sympathisers like Crashaw, and in 1644 he fled to France. He became a Catholic sometime around 1645. His friend Abraham Cowley found him living in poverty in Paris, and introduced him to Charles I's queen, Henrietta Maria. She sent Crashaw to Rome with a recommendation to the Pope. On his arrival in Italy however, Crashaw was simply allotted a position in a cardinal's household. Four months before he died, he was made a sub-canon of the Cathedral of Santa Casa in Loretto.

Crashaw was much influenced by the Italian poet Marino, as well as his reading of the Italian and Spanish mystics. Though his verse is somewhat uneven in quality, at its best it is characterised by brilliant use of extravagant baroque imagery.

http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/crashaw/crashbio.htm

[Saras]

Richard Sharpe