The New International Encyclopædia/Swain, Charles

SWAIN, Charles (1801-74). An English writer known as ‘the Manchester poet.’ He was born in Manchester, and lived all his life in England. For fourteen years he was a clerk in the dye house of his uncle; he afterwards carried on a business in engraving and lithographing. Between 1827 and 1867 he published several volumes of verse, among which are Dryburgh Abbey (1832), an elegy on Sir Walter Scott; English Melodies (1849); and the more ambitious The Mind and Other Poems (1832). Several of his songs, which have been set to music, are well known, as “Somebody's Waiting for Somebody” and “Tapping at the Window.” Consult the edition of his poems, with portrait and introduction by C. C. Smith (Boston, 1857).