Michael Drayton

1563-1631 / English

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Classics

Michael Drayton

1563-1631 / English

His most important work is contained in the 1619 edition of his Poems, and includes the sonnet 'Since There's No Help, Come Let Us Kiss and Part' which D.G. Rossetti described as 'almost the best in the language, if not quite'. His 1606 Poems Lyric and Pastoral introduced the form of the Horatian ode to English poetry, and contains 'To the Virginian Voyage' and 'Fair Stood the Wind for France'. He also wrote various poems on figures from mythology and history, notably England's Heroical Epistles (1597). His great work Poly-Olbion was intended as 'a chorographical description of all the tracts, rivers, mountains, forests, and other parts of Great Britain', and is one of the longest poems in English. Other works in his vast output include Idea. The Shepherd's Garland (1593), Idea's Mirror (1594), and Endymion and Phoebe (1595), one of the sources for Keats' Endymion.