Early Life and Career Until 1630
May was born in Mayfield, Sussex, the son of Sir Thomas May, a minor courtier. He matriculated at Sidney Sussex, Cambridge, graduating B.A. in 1613. He wrote his first published poem while at Cambridge, an untitled three-stanza contribution to the University's memorial collection of poems on the death of Henry Prince of Wales in 1612. Although the majority of this volume's poems are in Latin, May's (along with a few others) is in English. It uses the trope of Pythagorean transmigration, which he re-employs in later works.
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