Pick two poets who seem to have nothing to do with each other — a Gothic American and a pastoral Englishman, say — and see where the catalogue actually joins them: overlapping years, shared ground, distinctive themes, and the poems that secretly rhyme.
Robert Herrick
Richard Tottel
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Robert Herrick was born in London on 24 August 1591 and died at Dean Prior in Devon on 15 October 1674. He is remembered as one of the supreme lyric poets of seventeenth-century England: a writer capable of making a four-line epigram feel as complete as a polished jewel, and of making flowers, ribbons, country festivals, kisses, bells, tears, and prayer seem charged with extraordinary significance. His poetry is ofte…
“To read a poem is to hear the voice of the poet speaking across the years.”
Richard Tottel, born around 1528 or 1530 in the bustling cathedral city of Exeter in Devon, emerged from modest provincial roots to become one of the most transformative figures in the history of English literature. Though his primary trade was the printing of law books—volumes that shaped the legal minds of Tudor England—his name endures as the visionary behind *Songes and Sonettes*, better known today as *Tottel’s…
“That to have well written in verse, yea and in small parcels, deserveth great praise, the works of divers Latines, Italians, and other, do prove sufficiently.”
About 255 km separate Cheapside, London, England from Exeter, Devon, England. Both have ground in Devon.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Robert Herrick: london, dean prior, george villiers, carpe diem, to the virgins, to make much of time, gather ye rosebuds while ye may, upon a child that died, ben jonson. Richard Tottel: exeter, tottel’s miscellany, songes and sonettes, henry howard, thomas wyatt, william middleton, fleet street, stationers’ company.
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
Notable events from the years they were both alive.
Robert Herrick: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow. Richard Tottel: Despair, Sorrow, Longing.
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