Poet # 3- Richard Watson Dixon(Poem being studied: Humanity)

Richard Watson Dixon (May 5^th 1833 – January 23^rd 1900), he was an English poet and the son of Dr James Dixon, a Wesleyan minister. Richard went to King Edward’s School, Birmingham, and then went to Pembroke College, Oxford, where he became one of the famous Birmingham Set. In 1863 Richard won the English Sacred Poem prize. In 1899 he received the honorary degree of D.D. from Oxford and unfortunately died the following year at Warkworth. Dixon’s poems in the last fifteen years of his life were recognized as scholarly, refined, and a certain severe beauty, but he never got any general popularity as a poet, because of the poems appeal being directly to the scholar. He was a great student in history which directed much of his poetry. Richard’s typical poems have charm and melody, without introducing any new note or variety of rhythm. He will probably be longest remembered by the work that he did in the best years of his life, his History of the Church of England from the Abolition of the Roman Jurisdiction (1878-1902). At the time of his death he had completed six volumes, two of which were published after he passed.