Crashaw, Richard

(?1613-1649)

   His father, William, was one of the Puritan clergymen officiating at the execution of Mary Queen of Scots in 1587. Orphaned from the age of fourteen, Richard was educated at Charterhouse School and Pembroke College, Cambridge, and was one of the group known as the Metaphysical Poets. He had Roman Catholic leanings and fled to France in 1644, where he became a Catholic sometime around 1645, and died of a fever in Rome. Although he wrote secular poetry in Latin and Greek as well as in English, his fame rests mostly on his intense religious poetry. His Steps to the Temple (1646) refers to George Herbert's The Temple (1633). His English religious poems were republished in Paris in 1652 under the title Carmen Deo Nostro (Hymn to Our Lord). Some of his other poems: "And He Answered Them Nothing" (probably inspired by the trial of Jesus before Pilate as recorded in Matthew 27:12), "Delights of the Muses," "Hymn for New Year's Day," "The Flaming Heart," "The Shepherd's Hymn," "To Pontius Washing His Hands," "Upon the Death of a Friend."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition, 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). Richard Crashaw (http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/crashaw/). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Complete Poetry of Richard Crashaw. George Walton Williams, ed. New York University Press, 1972. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000.