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.
William Browne of Tavistock, born about 1588 and traditionally thought to have died about 1650, is one of the most attractive and elusive figures in early seventeenth-century English poetry. He was not a major public presence on the scale of Ben Jonson, John Donne, or George Wither, nor did he leave behind the unusually full documentary record that allows historians to reconstruct the lives of some contemporaries. Ye…
“In my poor cell and sequestration from all business, I bless God and pray for more such members in the Commonwealth.”
Neighbourhood:
Elizabethan Poets, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Renaissance Poets
John Farmer, born around 1570 and believed to have died sometime after 1601, perhaps as late as about 1605, occupies a curious and attractive place in the history of English Renaissance music. He was neither as prolific as Thomas Morley nor as institutionally prominent as William Byrd; he did not leave behind a large body of sacred music, a long record of court employment, or a biography richly documented by letters…
They overlapped for 18 years (1588–1605).
When William Browne, of Tavistock was born, John Farmer was about 18.
William Browne, of Tavistock was about 17 when John Farmer died.
William Browne, of Tavistock:
devonshire, britannia's pastorals, the shepherd's pipe, george wither, exeter college, inner temple, pastoral writing, classical pastoral.
John Farmer:
english madrigals, christ church cathedral, edward somerset, fair phyllis, the first set of english madrigals, elizabethan society, renaissance music, madrigal genre.
Poems that secretly rhyme
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
