Richard Jago

Richard Jago Poems

Richard Jago Biography

Richard Jago (October 1, 1715 – May 8, 1781) was an English poet. He was the third son of Richard Jago, Rector of Beaudesert, Warwickshire. Jago's best-known poem, The Blackbirds, was first printed in Hawkesworths Adventurer (No. 37, March 13, 1753), and was generally attributed to Gilbert West, but Jago published it in his own name, with other poems, in Robert Dodsley's Collection of Poems (vol. iv., 1755). In 1767 appeared a topographical poem, Edge Hill, or the Rural Prospect delineated and moralized; two separate sermons were published in 1755; and in 1768 Labor and Genius, a Fable. Shortly before his death Jago revised his poems, and they were published in 1784 by his friend, John Scott Hylton, as Poems Moral and Descriptive. See a notice prefixed to the edition of 1784; A. Chalmers, English Poets (vol. xvii., 1810); F. L. Colvile, Warwickshire Worthies (1870); some biographical notes are to be found in the letters of William Shenstone to Jago printed in vol. iii. of Shenstones Works (1769).)

The Best Poem Of Richard Jago

Absence

With leaden foot Time creeps along
While Delia is away:
With her, nor plaintive was the song,
Nor tedious was the day.

Ah, envious Pow’r! reverse my doom;
Now double thy career,
Strain ev’ry nerve, stretch ev’ry plume,
And rest them when she ’s here!

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