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Ben Jonson tells us how we should measure a life well lived.
Ben Jonson’s collection of short poems Underwoods was published in 1640, soon after he died. He tells us that it takes its title from a habit of classical poets, who liked to call their miscellanies ‘Woods’. If Jonson’s earlier poems were his woods, he said, then these little additions were shrubs on the woodland floor. The following lines are a reflection on the value of a life.
Sir Guyon lies in an enchanted swoon, but he is not without help.
Sir Guyon, the Knight of Temperance, has been commissioned to help an old man whose land is troubled by a wicked witch. The journey is fraught with dangers, and Sir Guyon has been cast into an endless swoon by Mammon, the money-god, for refusing to be his slave. As the knight slumbers, Spenser reflects on God’s care for the helpless.
John Donne gives God a free hand to do whatever needs to be done.
In this sonnet, John Donne, Dean of St Paul’s, compares himself to a town occupied by an enemy and now under siege by its true King. The inhabitants want to let him in to liberate them, but their own leading men are too weak or corrupt; so the people send out a desperate message: use all force necessary.
Mary Wordsworth wasn’t pretty or bookish, but she was kind and vital, and William loved her.
This poem is a look back over how William Wordsworth’s love for his wife Mary had developed over time. “The germ of this poem” he admitted “was four lines composed as a part of the verses on the Highland Girl. Though beginning in this way, it was written from my heart, as is sufficiently obvious.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge holds on to those precious moments when loneliness is a problem for tomorrow.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge visited Germany in September 1798 in company with the Wordsworths, staying until the following July. He would later remember Germany as ‘a bright spot of sunshine’ in his life, but at the time he was lonely and homesick, and the death of his little son Berkeley on February 10th added to his griefs. These verses were included in a letter home to his wife Sarah on April 23rd.