SOURCE: O Hehir, Brendan. “Coopers Hill and ‘Local Poetry’” and “Nature's Emblems,” in Expans'd Hieroglyphicks: A Critical Edition of Sir John Denham's Coopers Hill, University of California Press, 1969, pp. 3-15; 16-24.

In the following excerpt, O Hehir examines the combination of landscape and political material in Coopers Hill as it relates to the poem's genre and relationship to the emblem tradition.

Cooper's Hill is the work that confers upon [Denham] the rank and dignity of an original author. He seems to have been, at least among us, the author of a species of composition that may be denominated local poetry, of which the fundamental subject is some particular landscape, to be poetically described, with the addition of such embellishments as may be supplied by historical retrospection or incidental meditation.

To trace a new scheme of poetry has in itself a very high claim to praise, and its praise...