John Banister Tabb

John Banister Tabb 1845-1909, American poet, b. Amelia co., Va. He was converted to Roman Catholicism in 1872 and entered the priesthood in 1884. His poems on nature and religion are simple and polished and, at their best, reminiscent of the 17th-century English devotional poets. Among the published volumes are Poems (1894) and The Rosary in Rhyme (1904).

Tabb, John B[anister] (1845–1909), Virginia‐born poet, served as a Confederate blockade runner in the Civil War, and taught school in Baltimore. He was converted to Catholicism, and after ordination as a priest taught at St. Charles's College, near Baltimore (1884–1909), where George Sterling was one of his students. Tabb began early to write poetry but first attained fame when he published his Poems (1894). Later books included Lyrics (1897), Later Lyrics (1902), and The Rosary in Rhyme (1904). His brief, classically modeled poems, generally in the form of quatrains or musical lyrics, are marked by religious intensity and a cryptic, epigrammatic manner. His occasional humor, based on conceits, has caused his poetry to be compared both to that of his contemporary, Emily Dickinson, and to the work of the 17th‐century English metaphysical poets.