Samuel Woodford

Samuel Woodford (1636-1700) was an Anglican clergyman and poet, born in London and educated at St Paul's School and Wadham College, Oxford. He studied at the Inner Temple, where his chamber-fellow was the poet Thomas Flatman, and was elected to the Royal Society in 1664. He took holy orders in 1669 and held livings and canonries in Hampshire, Chichester and Winchester, taking his D.D. in 1677.

He is best known for his verse paraphrases of scripture: a Paraphrase upon the Psalms (1667) and A Paraphrase upon the Canticles (1679), the latter gathering the Song of Solomon, hymns and psalms from the New and Old Testaments, and occasional odes and sonnets, among them poems to Izaak Walton and Sir John Denham. He drew his inspiration from Abraham Cowley, and wrote in the irregular, Pindaric stanzas of the Cowleyan ode.