Barnes, Barnabe

(?1569-1609)

   Elizabethan poet, son of Richard Barnes, bishop of Durham. In 1591 he joined the expedition to Normandy led by the Earl of Essex. In 1593 he published his sonnet sequence Parthenophil and Parthenophe, and Sonnettes, Madrigals, Elegies, and Odes; A Divine Century of Spiritual (1595), Four Books of Offices (1606) in prose, along with two plays and several other works. His imagery is imaginative and expressive, and his madrigals, although few, prove him to have been a born singer. Some of his poems: "A Blast of Wind, a Momentary Breath," "An Ode," "Asclepiad," "Carmen Anacreontivm," "Content," "God's Virtue," "No More Lewd Lays," "Oh Whether Shall My Troubled Muse Incline?" "The Life of Man," "Then, First with Locks Dishevelled, and Bare," "To the Beautiful Lady the Lady Brigett Manners," "Vulcan in Lemnos Isle."

   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). Poemhunter (www.poemhunter.com). 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 Elizabethan Sonnet (www.sonnets.org). The New Oxford Book of Sixteenth Century Verse. Emrys Jones, ed. Oxford University Press, 2002. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000.