On the Death of Mr. Crashaw
1656 poem by Abraham Cowley
"On the Death of Mr. Crashaw" is an elegy by English poet Abraham Cowley in commemoration of his friend Richard Crashaw's death. First published in 1656, it is considered by literary critics as one of Cowley's greatest poems.
Synopsis
The poem celebrates the life of Richard Crashaw, who is described as "Poet and Saint". The narrator suggests that Crashaw's poems have a heavenly quality. He remarks that his "songs" bring poetry "nobly back to their Holy Land" and that they will be sung with the angel "ayres divine".
Analysis
David Trotter writes that the opening lines single "(Crashaw) out from the throng of profane poets", whereas throughout the rest of the poem, Crashaw's "saintliness" is contrasted with the "weaker—sometimes false—codes" and "relative homelessness" of the narrator. For instance, the narrator expresses his "despair at the single dimension of modern concerns" due to the use of the "weak parenthesis" in "(Vain men!)". N. K. Sugimura suggests that Cowley "may well have been paying homage to how Crashaw's lived appropriation of Counter-Reformation spirituality had succeeded in raising his particular strain of English devotional poetry." The poem also alludes to the Catholic "shrine" in Loretto at which Crashaw worked as a Catholic poet for merely three months before his death; Crashaw had previously been secretary to Italian Cardinal Giovanni Battista Maria Pallotta under the recommendation of Henrietta Maria.
Publication history
Richard Crashaw died on 21 August 1649.
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