The Religious Poems of Richard Crashaw

Richard Crashaw

Jan 1914 · B. Herder

About the author

Richard Crashaw was an English poet born in London in 1612. Crashaw was educated at Charterhouse in London and at Pembroke College, Cambridge, but his religious views ended his academic career. He went into exile in Holland and Paris. After converting to Roman Catholicism in 1646, he was introduced to the Pope who granted him an ecclesiastical post at the shrine of Loreto. Crashaw died there August 21, 1649. In 1634 his Latin epigrams, Epigramatum Sacorum, were published. His first English work was Steps to the Temple With Other Delights of the Moon, published in 1646 and expanded in 1648. The title was a tribute to George Herbert whose sacred verse, The Temple, was written in 1633. Herbert's puritan style was very different from that of Crashaw's sensuous imagery, exclamations, and loose structure. A revision of earlier religious poems, Carmen Deo Nostro was published after Crashaw's death.