Robert Bridges

Robert Bridges (1844–1930) was an English poet and physician. Born at Walmer in Kent, he was educated at Eton and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and trained in medicine at St Bartholomew's Hospital, practising until ill health led him to retire in 1882 and devote himself to poetry. He was a close friend of Gerard Manley Hopkins, whose poems he preserved and, in 1918, brought to the public.

His own verse, notable for its delicate lyrics and metrical experiment, including syllabic measures modelled on Milton's Samson Agonistes, appeared in small private editions such as the Daniel Press Poems of 1884. He became Poet Laureate in 1913, published the long philosophical poem The Testament of Beauty in 1929, and died at Boars Hill, near Oxford, in 1930.