Constantijn Huygens

Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687) was a Dutch diplomat, composer and poet, born at The Hague. He served three successive Princes of Orange as secretary, was knighted, and became Lord of Zuilichem. A man of wide learning and many languages, he was a friend of the poets Hooft, Cats and Vondel, and of the English poet John Donne, some of whose poems he translated into Dutch.

His own verse ranges from satire, epigram and occasional poetry to long descriptive and reflective poems in Dutch and Latin. He was the father of the scientist Christiaan Huygens, inventor of the pendulum clock. These English versions come from John Bowring and Harry S. van Dyk's Batavian Anthology (1824).