Richard Brathwait

Richard Brathwait Poems

Richard Brathwait Biography

Richard Braithwaite or Brathwait (1588–1673) was an English poet. He was born near Kendal, and educated at Oxford. He believed to have served with the Royalist army in the Civil War. He was the author of many works of very unequal merit, of which the best known is Drunken Barnaby's Four Journeys, which records his pilgrimages through England in rhymed Latin (said by Southey to be the best of modern times), and doggerel English verse. The English Gentleman (1631) and English Gentlewoman are in a much more decorous strain. Other works are The Golden Fleece (1611) (poems), The Poet's Willow, A Strappado for the Devil (a satire), and Art Asleepe, Husband?)

The Best Poem Of Richard Brathwait

The Signe In Cancer

A crabbed Shrow through sicknes weakly brought,
Wish't by all meanes a Doctor might be sought,
Who by his Art that hee her griefe might know,
Felt both her pulse, and cast her water too;
Which done, He to her Husband turn'd againe,
And wish'd him be content, all was in vaine:
For when the Signe's in Cancer shee should die;
To whom her Husband answer'd presently;
“If that my learned Doctor had beene so,
She had beene dead beleeue it long agoe:
For these ten yeares and odd she ha's beene mine,
And I ne're knew yet out of that Signe.

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