Country House Poems

A genre popular in early 17th century England, in which the poet compliments a wealthy patron or a friend through a description of his country house. It may be regarded but as a sub-set of the Topographical poem.

The model for the country house poem is Ben Jonson's "To Penshurst", published 1616, which compliments Robert Sidney, younger brother of Sir Philip Sidney on his Penshurst Place. The poem is full of classical allusions, to Martial and Horace, among others, and begins with the following lines alluding to Horace's Ode 2:18:

"Thou art not, Penshurst, built to envious show
Of touch or marble, nor canst boast a row
Of polished pillars, or a roof of gold;
Thou hast no lantern whereof tales are told,
Or stair, or courts; but stand’st an ancient pile,
And these grudged at, art reverenced the while."

This poem was imitated in subsequent country house poems. However, Emilia Lanier's "Description of Cookham" was in fact published earlier, in 1611, as a dedicatory verse at the end of her long narrative poem "Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum". In the "Description of Cookham", Lanier pays tribute to her patroness Margaret, Duchess of Cumberland through a description of her country seat as a paradise for literary women.

Other well-known instances of the genre include Andrew Marvell's "Upon Appleton House", which describes Thomas, Lord Fairfax's country house, where Marvell was a tutor between November 1650 and the end of 1652. The poem centres on Lord Fairfax's daughter Mary.

Thomas Carew also wrote two country house poems in the mould of "To Penshurst": "To Saxham" and "To My Friend G. N., from Wrest".

Even closer to the Jonsonian paradigm is a poem by the oldest of the so-called "Sons of Ben", Robert Herrick, "A Panegyric to Sir Lewis Pemberton".

ee also

*Descriptive poetry

Links

* [http://www.ic.arizona.edu/ic/mcbride/lanyer/sdrjcook.htm Lanier's "Description of Cookham"]
* [http://www.shu.ac.uk/emls/11-2/couwebco.htm Cousins and Webb: Appropriating and Attributing the Supernatural in the Early Modern Country House Poem]

Bibliography

*G. R. Hibbard: "The Country House Poem in the Seventeenth Century" (1956)
*William McClung: "The Country House in English Renaissance Poetry" (1977)
*Hugh Jenkins: "Feigned Commonwealths, the Country-House Poem and the Fashioning of the Ideal Community" (1998, ISBN 0-8207-0292-7)