Articles by Carol Rumens

Poem of the week: Rich or Poor, or Saint and Sinner by Thomas Love Peacock

A sharply satirical attack on unevenly applied 19th-century laws to enforce religious observance still bites today

The moon becomes the witty image of an isolated and contemptuously neglected elderly relation

A song to the consolations of winter is delivered with the grace and precision typical of this intellectually ambitious poet

A landscape of illusory peace is depicted just before the guns of battle reach it in the first world war

An elegant reflection on experience and imagination complicates a very familiar figure of speech

A collective dash for shelter in the city takes on a spiritual, near-religious power

An elegy to the poet’s personal physician is full of vivid detail delivered with infectious warmth

Two sonnets absorb with calm clarity a boy’s anguish at his mother’s loss

The 17th-century ‘server at table’ to Charles I puts a wry spin on courtly wooing