Cecil Day-Lewis CBE (27 April 1904 - 22 May 1972) was a British poet from Ireland and the Poet Laureate from 1968 until his death in 1972. He also wrote mystery stories under the pseudonym of Nicholas Blake. He is the father of actor Daniel Day-Lewis and documentary filmmaker and television chef Tamasin Day-Lewis.
Day-Lewis was born in Ballintubbert, County Laois, Ireland. He was the son of the Reverend Frank Cecil Day-Lewis and Kathleen Squires. After Day-Lewis's mother died in 1906, he was brought up in London by his father, with the help of an aunt, spending summer holidays with relatives in Wexford. Day-Lewis continued to regard himself as Anglo-Irish for the remainder of his life, though after the declaration of the Republic of Ireland in 1948 he chose British rather than Irish citizenship, on the grounds that 1940 had taught him where his deepest roots lay. He was educated at Sherborne School and at Wadham College, Oxford, from which he graduated in 1927.

A collection of poetry from Cecil Day Lewis, Poet Laureate from 1968 until his death in 1972.
Originally published in 1957, this collection shows how much his style had changed after having distanced himself from Auden. In 1951, he became only the second living writer (after TS Eliot) to be featured in the popular series of 'Penguin Poets' paperbacks. In his introduction, he wrote: 'Looking back over my verse of the last 20 years, I was struck by its lack of development - in the sense of one poetic phase emerging recognizably from the previous one and leading inevitably to the next: it would all be much tidier and more in accordance with critical specifications, were this not so. But my verse seems to me a series of fresh beginnings rather than a continuous line.'