Poems (1686)

Anne Killigrew was barely twenty-five when smallpox took her in 1685, but not before she left behind verses worthy of the Restoration court's highest praise. John Dryden himself called her 'a miracle of our tongue' in a legendary elegy that opens this collection. The poems that follow reveal a poet of startling poise: polished meditations on love and beauty, sharp satirical verses, and deeply personal reflections on mortality and faith. Killigrew writes with controlled passion, her couplets elegant but never cold, her voice assured despite her youth. She addresses the fleeting nature of beauty, the ache of longing, and the consolations of virtue with a maturity that makes her early death all the more poignant. This is court poetry at its most accomplished: technically adroit, emotionally nuanced, and haunted by the knowledge that its author never lived to see her twenty-sixth year. A small but luminous legacy from a life cut tragically short.