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The intense and intimate depiction of Richard Crashaw that prefaces his English volumes of poetry (Steps to the Temple, 1646, enlarged 1648) is also a candlelit window that opens on his soul. To look through this window is to discover Crashaw in the state of unruffled devotion which is presented as the hub of his poetic genius.
Reader, we stile his Sacred Poems, Stepps to the Temple, and aptly, for in the Temple of God, under his wing, he led his life in St. Maries Church neere St. Peters Colledge: There he lodged under Tertullian's roofe of Angels: There he made his nest more gladly then David's Swallow neere the house of God: where like a primitive Saint, he offered more prayers in the night, then others usually offer in the day; There, he penned these Poems, Stepps for happy soules to climb heaven by.
Whoever the "
Authors friend" may be who wrote this "Preface to the Reader," his portrait made a deep impression on early-seventeenth-century biographers of Crashaw such as David Lloyd and Anthony Wood.
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