A country house poem is a poem in which the author compliments a wealthy patron or a friend through a description of his country house. Such poems were popular in early 17th century England. The genre may be regarded as a sub-set of the topographical poem.
The model for the country house poem is Ben Jonson's To Penshurst, published 1616, which compliments Robert Sidney, younger brother of Sir Philip Sidney on his Penshurst Place. The poem is full of allusions, to Epiphanius,[1] Martial, and Horace, among others, and begins with the following lines alluding to Horace's Ode 2:18:
"Thou art not, Penshurst, built to envious show
Of touch or marble, nor canst boast a row
Of polished pillars, or a roof of gold;
Thou hast no lantern whereof tales are told,
Or stair, or courts; but stand’st an ancient pile,
And these grudged at, art reverenced the while."
This poem was imitated in subsequent country house poems. However, Aemilia Lanyer's Description of Cookham was in fact published earlier, in 1611, as a dedicatory verse at the end of her long narrative poem Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum. In the Description of Cookham, Lanyer pays tribute to her patroness Margaret Clifford, Countess of Cumberland through a description of her residence as a paradise for literary women. Cookham did not actually belong to Margaret Clifford, but was rented for her by her brother while Clifford was undergoing a dispute with her husband.
Other well-known instances of the genre include Andrew Marvell's Upon Appleton House, which describes Thomas, Lord Fairfax's country house, where Marvell was a tutor between November 1650 and the end of 1652. The poem centres on Lord Fairfax's daughter Maria.
Thomas Carew also wrote two country house poems in the mould of To Penshurst: To Saxham and To My Friend G. N., from Wrest.
Even closer to the Jonsonian paradigm is a poem by the oldest of the so-called "Sons of Ben", Robert Herrick, A Panegyric to Sir Lewis Pemberton.
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