Hake was born in Leeds on 10 March 1809, and was descended from an old Devonshire family who had 'lived on the soil for many years without being distinguished in any branch of science, literature, or art.'

His father died when Hake was three years old and his mother, left with a moderate competence, continued to live in Devonshire, and obtained for her son an admission to Christ's Hospital, where, first at the preparatory school at Hertford and afterwards in London, he received most of his education.

After travelling for some time in Italy he settled at Brighton, where he was for five years physician to the dispensary, then proceeded to Paris for a year's study, and on his return in 1839 published Piromides, a tragedy on the mysteries of Isis, and the 'nebulous but impressive romance,' as Mr. W. M. Rossetti calls it, Vates, or the Philosophy of Madness, first issued in four incomplete numbers, with illustrations by Charles Landseer (1840, 4to), and afterwards republished in Ainsworth's Magazine as 'Yaldarno, or the Ordeal of Art-Worship.

He wrote his Lily of the Valley and his Old Souls, which, with other poems, were threaded together as The World's Epitaph, privately printed in 1866 in an edition of one hundred copies.

[1] After 1872, Hake spent a considerable time in Italy and Germany, and, returning to England, settled near St. John's Wood, principally occupied in the composition and publication of poetry for the few, difficult rather than obscure in thought and diction, but uninviting to those who cannot appreciate mystical symbolism.

In 1871, Hake published Madeline; in 1872, Parables and Tales; in 1879, Legends of the Morrow; in 1880 Maiden Ecstasy (poems)[4] in 1883, The Serpent Play; in 1890, New Day Sonnets; and, in 1892, his Memoirs of Eighty Years.