Born c.1524, Thomas Tusser was an English poet who wrote during the reign of Queen Elizabeth 1. Educated at Eton and King’s College and Trinity Hall, Cambridge he served at the British court until he left to become a farmer.
Tusser wrote a long, continuous poem titled, Five Hundreth Pointes of Good Husbandrie to as many of Good Huswifery (1573), which served as an informational poem, a calendar, and a how-to book, written in rhyming couplets.
He penned many verses which have become common idioms, such as “A fool and his money are soon parted” and “Sweet April showers do spring May flowers” from which we get April showers bring may flowers.
Oh that my poems might leave such a mark and endure as long as his. It helps to have published my work, so that’s out in the world, but I’m writing during an era in which poetry is not valued as it once was.
Even so, I can’t help but hope, while I write my verses, that they will live on in some meaningful way; that they might touch, console, and delight others as they have done for me. Well, as some say, “Fingers crossed.”
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