Poetry Codex

Restoration & Augustan

Christopher Smart

1722–1771

Christopher Smart (1722–1771) was born in Kent and educated at Cambridge, where he became a fellow of Pembroke Hall. He lived in London as a hack writer and was confined for mental illness between 1756 and 1763. He died in a debtors’ prison.

His A Song to David (1763) is the poem by which he is chiefly remembered; its ecstatic language was thought a sign of his madness and it was little read for a century. His Hymns for the Amusement of Children appeared in 1771, and Jubilate Agno, written in confinement, was not published until the twentieth century.

Major Works (1)

  1. The Hop-Garden — Didactic poem, 1752

Poems (63)

  1. A Song to David
  2. Mirth
  3. Against Despair
  4. Beauty (For a Damsel)
  5. Charity
  6. Contentment
  7. For Christmas-Day
  8. For Easter-Sunday
  9. For Good-Friday
  10. For Saturday
  11. For Sunday
  12. Good-nature to Animals
  13. Hope
  14. Humility
  15. Long-suffering of God
  16. Melancholy
  17. Mercy
  18. Prayer
  19. Silence
  20. Wisdom
  21. Taste
  22. The Wholesale Critic and the Hop-Merchant
  23. The English Bull Dog, Dutch Mastiff, and Quail
  24. Fashion and Night
  25. The Tea-Pot and the Scrubbing-Brush
  26. Madam and the Magpie
  27. The Snake, the Goose, and the Nightingale
  28. The Bag-Wig and the Tobacco-Pipe
  29. On a Lady Throwing Snow-Balls at Her Lover
  30. Madam, If You Please
  31. On Good-Nature
  32. Against Ill-Nature
  33. A Morning Piece, or, An Hymn for the Hay-Makers
  34. A Noon-Piece; or, The Mowers at Dinner
  35. A Night-Piece; or, Modern Philosophy
  36. On the Sudden Death of a Clergyman
  37. On the Fifth of December, Being the Birth-day of a Beautiful Young Lady
  38. The Pretty Chambermaid
  39. Idleness
  40. To the Reverend and Learned Dr. Webster, Occasioned by His Dialogues on Anger and Forgiveness
  41. The Author Apologizes to a Lady, for His Being a Little Man
  42. On Miss _____
  43. Epithalamium
  44. To Ethelinda, on Her Doing My Verses the Honour of Wearing Them in Her Bosom
  45. On an Eagle Confined in a College-Court
  46. Sweet William
  47. The Lass with the Golden Locks
  48. The Decision
  49. The Talkative Fair
  50. The Silent Fair
  51. The Force of Innocence
  52. The Distressed Damsel
  53. The Fair Recluse
  54. To Miss _____, One of the Chichester Graces
  55. The Physician and the Monkey
  56. Apollo and Daphne
  57. Care and Generosity
  58. An Occasional Prologue to Othello
  59. Epilogue to Othello, Spoken by Desdemona
  60. A Voyage to the Planets
  61. The Temple of Dulness
  62. A Mechanical Solution of the Propagation of Yawning
  63. On a Bed of Guernsey Lilies

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