Edmund Waller

Edmund Waller 1606-87, English poet. He studied at Eton and Cambridge and became a prominent speaker in Parliament at a young age. He married twice (1631 and 1644), but his early poems are addressed to "Sacharissa," Lady Dorothy Sidney, who refused to marry him. Although at first an antiroyalist, he later supported Charles I against Parliament and conceived "Waller's plot" (1643) to secure the city of London for the king. The plot was discovered, and Waller was fined and banished. He was pardoned in 1651 and after the Restoration was again in Parliament, where he served until his death. His verse is noted for its smoothness and polish, but aside from a few amatory poems his importance rests on his contributions in style, most notably the development of the heroic couplet. The first collection of his works appeared in 1645 and immediately went through several editions. His best-known lyrics are "Go, Lovely Rose" and "On a Girdle."

Bibliography: See his poems ed. by G. T. Drury (1893, repr. 1968); A. W. Allison, Toward an Augustan Poetic (1962).

Waller, Edmund (1606–87), entered Parliament early and was at first an active member of the opposition. Later he became a Royalist, and in 1643 was leader in a plot to seize London for Charles I. For this he was imprisoned, fined, and banished. He made his peace with Cromwell in 1651, returned to England, and was restored to favour at the Restoration. After the death of his first wife he unsuccessfully courted Lady Dorothy Sidney, the ‘Sacharissa’ of his poems. Waller was a precocious poet; he wrote, probably in 1625, the complimentary piece His Majesty's Escape at St Andere in heroic couplets, one of the first examples of the form. His verse is of a polished simplicity; Dryden described him as ‘the father of our English numbers’, linking his name with Denham's as poets who brought in the Augustan age. His early poems include ‘On a Girdle’ and ‘Go, lovely rose’; his later Instructions to a Painter (1666) and ‘Of the Last Verses in the Book’. His Poems first appeared in 1645, Divine Poems in 1685.