Christopher Smart
1722-1771 18th century
Praise that goes on where the mind gives way.
Who was Christopher Smart?
A poet in Cambridge and then London, deep in debt, he was confined for seven years as a madman for praying aloud in the street and calling on passers-by to pray with him. In the asylum, with a cat for his only company, he wrote line by line Jubilate Agno, recovered and published only in the twentieth century, and A Song to David. He died in a debtors' prison at forty-nine.
In their own words
For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry. For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
Glorious the sun in mid career; glorious th' assembled fires appear; glorious the comet's train.
And now the matchless deed's achiev'd, determined, dared, and done.