an English poet, teacher, Anglican cleric and Catholic convert, who was among the major figures associated with the metaphysical poets in seventeenth-century English literature. Crashaw was ordained as a clergyman in the Church of England, but his theology and practice embraced the Catholic heritage of Anglicanism and the High Church ritual reforms enacted by Archbishop Laud. Crashaw's poetry, although often categorized with those of the contemporary English metaphysical poets, exhibits similarities with the Baroque poets and influenced in part by the works of Italian and Spanish mystics.
