Vitaulium: Hofwyck en Spaansche Wijsheit

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Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687) was the supreme Dutch baroque poet and a figure of extraordinary range: diplomat, composer, and the father of the physicist Christiaan Huygens. Hofwyck — his poem about his country estate — is a meditative nature poem in the tradition of Virgil's Georgics: a celebration of the contemplative life, the pleasures of retirement from court, and the ordering of a garden as philosophical act. Spaansche Wijsheit adds a collection of moral aphorisms. Together they represent Dutch Golden Age humanism at its most eloquent.