Country house poems

A country house poem is a poem in which the author compliments a wealthy patron or a friend through a description of his country house. Such poems were popular in early 17th century England. The genre may be regarded as a sub-set of the topographical poem.

The model for the country house poem is Ben Jonson's To Penshurst, published in 1616, which compliments Robert Sidney, 1st Earl of Leicester, younger brother of Sir Philip Sidney on his Penshurst Place. It contrasts Penshurst, a large and important late medieval house which was extended in a similar style under Elizabeth I, with more recent prodigy houses, which it calls "proud, ambitious heaps". The poem has many allusions, to Epiphanius,Martial, and Horace, amongst others, and begins with the following lines referencing Horace's Ode 2:18:

This poem was imitated in subsequent country house poems. Aemilia Lanyer's Description of Cookham, however, had in fact been 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, Lanyer pays tribute to her patroness Margaret Clifford, Countess of Cumberland, through a description of her residence as a paradise for literary women. The estate at Cookham did not actually belong to Margaret Clifford, but was rented for her by her brother while Clifford was undergoing a dispute with her husband.

"To Richard Cotton, Esq.," composed by Geoffrey Whitney in 1586, which describes Combermere Abbey using the metaphor of a beehive, may be the earliest example.

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