Drummond of Hawthornden, William (1585-1649), was the first important Scottish poet to write in English, rather than Scots. He wrote a large amount of poetry and an important prose work, The Cypress Grove (1623), one of several political pamphlets he composed. His poetry was published in Poems (1614, 1616) and Flowres of Sion (1623). His poem Forth Feasting (1617) celebrates a visit to Scotland by King James I. Drummond was the first poet to use the Italian metrical form called the canzone in English poetry.
Drummond was born on Dec. 13, 1585, at Hawthornden Manor, near Edinburgh, and educated at Edinburgh University. He traveled widely in England and continental Europe, and he was acquainted with many of the leading European literary figures of his time. He inherited the estate at Hawthornden in 1610 and lived quietly there much of the rest of his life as a cultured man of wealth. He died on Dec. 4, 1649.
