Robert Southwell, Selected Poems Henry Constable, Pastorals and Sonnets, William Drummond, Songs, Sonnets, Etc

Excerpt from Robert Southwell, Selected Poems: Henry Constable, Pastorals and Sonnets, William Drummond, Songs, Sonnets, EtcThe three poets brought together in this booklet were all born within one quarter of a century, and their work represents much that is most characteristic of one of the richest periods in our poetical history. The earliest of them was born two or three years before the birth of Shakespeare, the latest of them died in the year in which Lovelace's "Lucasta" was first published. The first two - and the two of the trio least well-remembered - have this in common, that they were both of them Roman Catholics in days when their native country was little tolerant of such. Each was a man of true poetic feeling and gifts, who is perhaps only partly remembered because he was but a lesser light more or less dimmed by the brilliant galaxy in which he was set. This is not the place for a close examination of their writings, a comparison of their methods, a balancing of their relative positions in our literary hierarchy; here we have but a handful of blossoms gathered from three gardens of poesy, at a time when it could most truly be said that all could grow the flower for all had got the seed. A brief note of the position that each held in his time will form perhaps the most appropriate preface.Robert Southwell (1561?-1595), who is best known, by those who know him at all, as the writer of that beautifully fanciful devout lyric, "The Burning Babe," was the son of Richard Southwell of Horsham St. Faith's in Norfolk, and it is interesting to recall that his maternal ancestry gave him descent from that Sussex family from which there also descended in Percy Bysshe Shelley a later poet of a very different stamp.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.