Edmund Waller

Edmund Waller

About Edmund Waller

Edmund Waller was a great classic english poet. Waller was a precocious poet; he wrote, probably as early as 1625, a complimentary piece on His Majesty's Escape at St Andere in heroic couplets, one of the first examples of a form that prevailed in english poetry for some two centuries. His verse, much of it occupied with praise of Sacharissa, Lady Carlisle, and others, is of a polished simplicity; Dryden repeatedly praised his 'sweetness', describing him as 'the father of our English numbers', and linking his name with Denham's as poets who brought in the Augustan age. His early poems include 'On a Girdle' and 'Go, lovely rose'; his later Instructions to a Painter (1666, on the battle of Sole Bay) and 'Of the Last Verses in the Book', containing the famous lines, 'The Soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed, I Lets in new light through chinks that time hath made.' His Poems first appeared in 1645, Divine Poems in 1685, and Poems.
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Waller was regarded by some as the pioneer in introducing the classical couplet into English verse. It is, of course, obvious that Waller could not "introduce" what had been invented, and admirably exemplified, by Geoffrey Chaucer.

Edmund Waller Poems




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