Waller, Edmund

(1606-1687)

   Born in Coleshill near Amersham, Buckinghamshire, and educated at Eton College and Cambridge University, he entered Parliament at a young age and switched from opposition to the king to being a Royalist and fighting against the Parliamentarians. In 1643 he was involved in a Royalist conspiracy against Parliament known as "Waller's Plot." Captured and imprisoned in 1643, he informed on his associates and, possibly because he was a distant relative of Oliver Cromwell, was given lenient treatment; he was exiled to the Continent until 1651. At the Restoration he again sided with Charles II and survived when all around lost their land and wealth. He died at Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire. One of his often quoted poems is "Go Lovely Rose," and his poetic style was praised by John Dryden and Alexander Pope (see entries). Some of his publications: The Passion of Dido for Æneas, 1658. A Poem on the Present Assembly of Parliament, 1686. A Poem on the Present Assembling of the Parliament, 1697. Some of his poems: "Of Loving at First Sight," "On the Duke of Monmouth's Expedition," "The Battle of the Summer Islands," "The Garden of Bermuda."

   Sources: Ben Jonson and the Cavalier Poets. Hugh MacLaen, ed. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1974. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. Garden Poems. John Hollander, ed. Alfred A. Knopf, 1996. Microsoft Encarta 2006 (DVD). Microsoft Corporation, 2006. Seventeenth Century Poetry: The Schools of Donne and Jonson. Hugh Kenner, ed. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964. Seventeenth-Century British Poetry: 1603-1660. John P. Rumrich, ed. University of Texas, Austin and Gregory Chaplin, Bridgewater State University, W.W. Norton, 2005. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources (http://library.stanford.edu). The New Oxford Book of Christian Verse. Donald Davie, ed. Oxford University Press, 1981. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. The Poems of Edmund Waller. Greenwood Press, 1968.