William Barnes

William Barnes (1801 – 1886) was born in Dorset and was a remarkable polymath. As well as writing some 800 poems (including Poems of Rural Life in Dorset dialect in 1844) he was a mathematician, an engraver and a priest. He was friends with Thomas Hardy, Tennyson and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Ralph Vaughan Williams set four of his poems to music, including the much-loved ‘Linden Lea’.