Today is the birthday of the poet Leigh Hunt. A friend and publisher of Keats, Shelley, Browning and Tennyson, he was known for many things.
But when I was a child, he was known to me as the author of one of my favorite poems. I think it was the very first poem I ever memorized:
Jenny kiss’d me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,
Say that health and wealth have miss’d me,
Say I’m growing old, but add
Jenny kiss’d me.