The New International Encyclopædia/Swain, Charles

SWAIN, (1801-74). An English writer known as &lsquo;the Manchester poet.&rsquo; 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 &ldquo;Somebody's Waiting for Somebody&rdquo; and &ldquo;Tapping at the Window.&rdquo; Consult the edition of his poems, with portrait and introduction by C. C. Smith (Boston, 1857).