From what slender evidence there is, the poet Sarah Dixon (1671-1765) spent almost all of her long life in Kent. The daughter of a barrister from the Middle Temple, she was probably born in Rochester, but moved with her family to the area around Canterbury, either at Hackington, or Newnham, a village near Faversham. There is no record of her being married or of having children. What records of her life remain are mostly through her poetry, of which the earliest published pieces were from 1716. The `Poems for Several Occasions’, issued in 500 copies in 1740 was of enough significance to gain the support of contemporaries like Alexandra Pope.
At the age of 73 Dixon wrote a poem `On the Ruins of St Austins’, the ancient site of the monastic foundation in Canterbury which was destroyed during the dissolution under Henry the Eighth in 1538. This work was issued after her death in 1774, in the Gentleman’s Magazine.
For a figure where there is such slender historical material testifying to their life, it is best to allow their works to speak for them. `To Strephon’ is a representative piece, from the 1740 collection:
`When you and I shall to our earth return,
And the world thinks each quiet in their urn;
When life’s gay scene no more shall cheat the eye
With flattering prospects of uncertain joy;
When truth and falsehood shall unveiled appear,
And gold, which rules below, no influence shall bear:
Then tell me, Strephon, where our souls shall move,
And how our tale shall be received above.
Of broken vows, a long account for you;
For me—the sin of loving aught below.
Ah, Strephon! why was I ordained by fate
To please a swain, so fickle and ingrate?
Why, from the airy, witty and the fair,
Was I the choice of one so insincere?
And why, my constant heart, art thou the same?
Why not extinguished the disastrous flame?
Fond heart! False Strephon!—but the conflict’s o’er;
You can betray, nor I believe, no more.
Forgive us, Heaven! though never, never here
We meet again, may we be angels there:
There may my faithful passion find reward;
Your guilt be pardoned, and my prayers be heard.’
This testifies to the mordant wit and emotional intelligence of one who may not have moved much in their life from the place where they were born, but certainly observed enough there to make searching evaluations of human nature.