Works
His extant writings, noted by Thomas Park in Brydges's British Bibliographer, number over a hundred. Wither wrote, generally, in a pure English idiom, and preferred the reputation of rusticity. According to the Dunciad "Withers, Ward, and Gildon rest" together "Safe, where no Critics damn, no duns molest".
After a period of neglect, George Ellis anthologised Wither in Specimens of the Early English Poets (1790). Samuel Egerton Brydges published The Shepherds Hunting (1814), Fidelia (1815) and Fair Virtue (1818), and a selection appeared in Ezekiel Sanford's Works of the British Poets, vol. v. (1819).
Most of Wither's works were edited in twenty volumes for the Spenser Society (1871–82); a selection was included by Henry Morley in his Companion Poets (1891); Fidelia and Fair Virtue are included in Edward Arber's English Garner (vol. iv, 1882; vol. vi, 1883), and The Poetry of George Wither was edited by Frank Sidgwick in 1902.
A selection of Wither's hymns was published in 2011 by The Phoenix Press in The Gibbons Songbook. Whilst primarily a realisation of the tunes Orlando Gibbons wrote for The Hymns and Songs of the Church a selection of verses from the hymns is paired with the original verses from the King James Bible which inspired Wither to create the hymns.
Read more about this topic: George Wither
Famous quotes containing the word works:
“The works of women are symbolical.
We sew, sew, prick our fingers, dull our sight,
Producing what? A pair of slippers, sir,
To put on when you’re weary or a stool
To stumble over and vex you ... “curse that stool!”
Or else at best, a cushion, where you lean
And sleep, and dream of something we are not,
But would be for your sake. Alas, alas!
This hurts most, this ... that, after all, we are paid
The worth of our work, perhaps.”
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“Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“It is the art of mankind to polish the world, and every one who works is scrubbing in some part.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)