By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Unlike his friend and contemporary Sir Philip Sidney, Fulke Greville did not have a noble or heroic death. Sidney died aged 31 while on a military campaign in the Netherlands, and as he lay wounded, he reportedly let another more gravely injured soldier drink his water, saying that ‘thy necessity is yet greater than mine’. He died a hero, and when his body was returned to London he was interred in Old St Paul’s Cathedral.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
What connects the well-known proverbs ‘fools rush in where angels fear to tread’, ‘a little learning is a dangerous thing’, and ‘to err is human, to forgive divine’? The answer is that not only do we have the same man to thank for all three, but he originated them all in the same poem, and he did so when he was only 21 years old.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Sheep in Fog’ is a poem by Sylvia Plath (1932-63), which was published in her posthumous second collection Ariel in 1965. For my money, it’s one of Plath’s finest poems, if not the finest. But it’s also a poem which conveys much by using very few words: unlike the transitional poems she wrote in 1961 – ‘The Moon and the Yew Tree’ springs to mind – ‘Sheep in Fog’ reflects a more pared-back, controlled, and focused style.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘A Hymn to the Morning’ is a poem written by Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753-84) in praise of the morning; it’s a companion-piece to her ‘A Hymn to the Evening’ (which, as you’ve probably guessed, was a poem in praise of the evening).
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Six Young Men’ is one of the most successful poems in Ted Hughes’ first collection, The Hawk in the Rain (1957). It might be variously categorised as a war poem, an ekphrastic poem (of which more in a moment), and a historical poem, since Hughes wrote the poem in the mid-1950s when the First World War was already nearly four decades in the past.