From the Stunning Richard Crashaw
It pains me that Crashaw is often dismissed in classes on Seventeenth Century poets with a single poem, or perhaps two, and a words that he is, in fact, a minor poet. Both Vaughn and Crashaw suffer this ignominy, in my opinion, because the majority of their respective opera are religious in tone. Unlike Herrick or Donne, the religious verse is not salted through with lyrics that are just short of salacious (and sometimes not short of it). Crashaw is a Catholic Poet who has been unjustly underrated in Academia and who needs to be better appreciated by the reading public. Following in the strain of my first post this morning, I must declare that the Poetry of the Seventeenth Century is objectively more beautiful than any subsequent verse. ;-P
Two Went up into the Temple to Pray Richard Crashaw (1613-1649)
Two went to pray? O rather say
One went to brag, th' other to pray:One stands up close and treads on high,
Where th' other dares not send his eye.One nearer to God's altar trod,
The other to the altar's God.
