Edward Benlowes Biography

Edward Benlowes (July 12, 1603 – December 18, 1676) was an English poet, son of Andrew Benlowes of Brent Hall, Essex. He matriculated at St Johns College, Cambridge, in 1620, and on leaving the university he made a prolonged tour on the continent of Europe. He was a Roman Catholic in middle life, but became a convert to Protestantism in his later years. He dissipated his fortune by openhanded generosity to his friends and relations, and possibly by serving in the Civil War; so that he was in great poverty at the time of his death. The last eight years of his life were passed at Oxford. Many of his writings are in Latin. His most important work is Theophila, or Loves Sacrifice, a Divine Poem (1652). The poem deals with mystical religion, telling how the soul, represented by Theophila, ascends by humility, zeal and contemplation, and triumphs over the sins of the senses. It is written in a curious stanza of three lines of unequal length rhyming together.