Richard Crashaw (1613–1649) numbers among the metaphysical poets of seventeenth-century England, in company with George Herbert and John Donne. Like Herbert, and in a reversal of Donne’s trajectory, Crashaw began as a High-Church Anglican, though his father had been a Puritan-leaning divine who published pamphets decrying the evils of popery. The younger Crashaw was educated at the Charterhouse School and Pembroke College, Cambridge, then served for a number of years as a Fellow of Peterhouse College, Cambridge. Though no records exist to verify this significant segment of his biography, he is said to have received holy orders in the Church of England, and to have served as vicar at the Church of Saint Mary the Less, colloquially known as Little Saint Mary’s, adjacent to Peterhouse in Cambridge. Today the glass doors leading into the church bear his engraved lines. On Oliver Cromwell’s seizure of the city in 1643, Crashaw found himself exiled from an entire way of life. He took refuge on the Continent, where he converted to Roman Catholicism. Appointed to a minor position at the Shrine of the Holy House at Loreto, in Italy, he served only a few months before his sudden death. Crashaw’s poems, meanwhile, like those of his better-known contemporaries, delight in opposition and paradox. The selection of epigrams featured here, in rhymed couplets and quatrains, showcases the poet’s savor for juxtapositions and reversals: the widow contrasted with the profligate rich man, the Prodigal Son who gives all his inheritance for pig feed, the devil who turns the wine of joy to tears, the Lord’s tomb which entombs only death itself.  

Divine Epigrams 
by Richard Crashaw 

The Widow’s Mites. 

TWO mites, two drops, yet all her house and land, 
Fall from a steady heart, though trembling hand : 
The other’s wanton wealth foams high, and brave ; 
The other cast away, she only gave. 

On the Prodigal. 

TELL me, bright boy, tell me, my golden lad, 
Whither away so frolic ?  why so glad ? 
What all thy wealth in council ? all thy state ? 
Are husks so dear ?  troth ’tis a mighty rate. 
 
To our Lord, upon the Water made Wine. 

THOU water turn’st to wine, fair friend of life ; 
    Thy foe, to cross the sweet arts of Thy reign, 
Distils from thence the tears of wrath and strife, 
    And so turns wine to water back again. 
 
On the Sepulcher of our Lord. 

HERE, where our Lord once laid his Head, 
Now the grave lies buriéd. 

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With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems will be typically drawn from the lesser-known portion of the history of English verse. In the coming months we will be reaching out to contemporary poets for examples of current, primarily formalist work, to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.