Metaphysical Poets

The poems by Vaughan printed here are from Silex Scintillans ("Sparkling Flint") 1655, but all except "The Star," "They are all gone into the world of Light," and "The Water-Fall" were first published in a 1650 edition of Silex Scintillans to which a second part was added in 1655.

After lying in manuscript for over two centuries, two autograph volumes of poetry and prose by Thomas Traherne were discovered in a London bookstall in 1896 and were thought by A. B. Grosart to be the work of Vaughan. After Dr.

All the poems of Marvell were published (three years after his death) in Miscellaneous Poems, 1681. Most of them cannot be accurately dated.

Herbert's poems were first published shortly after his death, in The Temple, Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations by Mr. George Herbert, 1633. Some of them had already circulated in MS. His poems are so full of biblical echoes or quotations, and his images so often liturgical, that only full annotation (rather than mere reference) can properly bring out his indebtedness.

All the poems by Donne included here, except "The First Anniversary" (1611) and "The Second Anniversary" (1612), were first published, after Donne's death, in the 1633 or 1635 editions of Poems, by J. D. Most of the non-religious poems may have been written by the time he was twenty-five.

• Lindsay, Alexander. “Cowley, Abraham (1618-1667).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004.

• The Poems of John Cleveland. Ed. Brian Morris and Eleanor Withington. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967.
• Cousins, A. D.. “Cleveland, John (bap. 1613, d. 1658).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004.