{\b Richard Crashaw}.

{\b Date of Birth}.: 1612-3 (exact date uncertain)

{\b Date of Death}.: 21 August 1649

{\b Works}.

English poet. His first published poetry was in Latin, Epigrammatum Sacrorum 
Liber [A Book of Sacred Epigrams] (1634). His next collection, published in 
1646, was made up of poems in Latin and English, and was divided into a 
section of religious verse, Steps to the Temple, and one of secular poetry, 
Delights of the Muses. This book contained his most famous poems, including 
'Music's Duel', 'Wishes.  To his (supposed) Mistresse', and the poems 
addressed to St Theresa, 'The Flaming Heart' and the hymn 'Love, thou art 
absolute sole Lord / Of Life and Death'. An enlarged version of this 
collection was published three years after Crashaw's death, under the title 
Carmen Deo Nostro, and incorporated twelve of his own drawings.

{\b Featured Works}.

'Wishes. To his (supposed) Mistress'.

{\b General Comment}.

Richard was the only son of William Crashaw, a puritan preacher in London who 
had officiated at the burning of Mary, Queen of Scots. In defiance of his 
father's views on religion, Crashaw went  to a High Church college at 
Cambridge, Pembroke. He later became a fellow of Peterhouse College but was 
forced to resign because of his Roman Catholic leanings. 

Victory for Oliver Cromwell's Puritans in the Civil War made England a 
dangerous place for Catholic sympathisers like Crashaw, and in 1644 he fled to 
France. He became a Catholic sometime around 1645. His friend Abraham Cowley 
found him living in poverty in Paris, and introduced him to Charles I's Queen, 
Henrietta Maria. She sent Crashaw to Rome with a recommendation to the Pope. 
On his arrival in Italy however,  Crashaw was simply allotted a position in a 
cardinal's household. Four months before he died, he was made a sub-canon of 
the Cathedral of Santa Casa in Loreto.

Crashaw was much influenced by the Italian poet Marino, as well as his reading 
of the Italian and Spanish mystics. Though his verse is somewhat uneven in 
quality, at its best it is characterised by brilliant use of extravagant 
baroque imagery.