William Cullen Bryant was born on 3 November 1794 in the rural hill town of Cummington, Massachusetts, and died in New York City on 12 June 1878. During his unusually long life, he became several things at once: one of the earliest American poets to command serious respect at home and abroad, a formidable editor whose newspaper helped shape national political opinion, a translator of Homer, a civic reformer, and a pu…
“To write fine poetry requires intellectual faculties of the highest order, and among these, not the least important, is the faculty of reason.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets, Transcendentalists
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Peace, Wonder
Alfred Tennyson, later Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was born on 6 August 1809 at Somersby rectory in Lincolnshire, England, and died on 6 October 1892 at Lurgashall in Sussex. During his long life he became the defining poetic voice of the Victorian age: at once a public laureate who wrote for national occasions and a private, searching poet whose work returned obsessively to bereavement, desire, religious uncertainty, mem…
“To decry one original poet in order to magnify another is like despising an oak-tree because you prefer a beech, and almost as sensible.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Dramatic Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Sorrow
