born April 3, 1593, Montgomery Castle, Wales
died March 1, 1633, Bemerton, Wiltshire, Eng.
British Metaphysical poet.
He was elected orator of Cambridge University in 1620, a position that involved him with the royal court. He was later ordained and became a rector at a rural parish, to which he devoted himself unstintingly until his death. His poems, published only after his death in The Temple (1633), concern personal, doctrinal, and ritual matters, and they are noted for their mastery of metrical form, use of allegory and analogy, and religious devotion. Some are pattern poems, the lines forming a shape suggestive of the subject. (See also Metaphysical poetry .)