Though not a major poetic intelligence or innovator of the stature of John Donne, nor an exquisite artistic craftsman like George Herbert, Henry King produced a substantial body of high-quality verse. His poetry is consistently intellectually demanding and artful, and some of it is aesthetically superb. Employing principally (though not exclusively) the rhymed couplet, in poems ranging from 2 to over 500 lines, King wrote in many genres and poetic modes, producing commendatory verses to friends and patrons, translations from classical writers, poems commemorative of public events and notable achievements, denunciatory poems on figures of whom he disapproved, poems of religious meditation and philosophical reflection, narrative poems their eldest sons after one another and wrote poetry so similar that editors have frequently confused their work.

Henry left Christ Church in July of 1616 and, in accordance with the arrangement of his father (the bishop of London), assumed a prebendary at Saint...