Robert Williams Parry, known in literature as R. Williams Parry, was born on 6 March 1884 at Talysarn in the Nantlle Valley of Caernarfonshire, north-west Wales, and died on 4 January 1956. He became one of the most admired Welsh-language poets of the twentieth century, though he was never a prolific author in the ordinary commercial sense. His reputation rests instead upon a relatively small body of exceptionally fi…
Compare Poets
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.
Poet A
R. Williams Parry
Poet B
Thomas Parnell
Compare two related contemporaries
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Kindred spirits
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 76%
Blended 76%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Thomas Parnell, born in Dublin on 11 September 1679 and dead at Chester, England, on 24 October 1718, occupies a distinctive position in the literary culture of the early eighteenth century. He was an Anglo-Irish clergyman, poet, translator, essayist, and valued member of the brilliant circle that included Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, John Gay, and John Arbuthnot. His name is often introduced through those greater…
“Mankind is thus managed by the breath of Opinion, deluded by Errour, fired by Self-Conceit, and given up to be trained in all the courses of Vanity, till Scorn or Poverty come upon us.”
In time
R. Williams Parry
Thomas Parnell
1679
1956
Their lives did not overlap.
166 years separate the earlier death from the later birth.
On the map
About 126 km separate Talysarn, Gwynedd, Wales from Dublin, Ireland. Shared ground: United Kingdom.
R. Williams Parry
Thomas Parnell
Themes they return to
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Shared
From the biographies
R. Williams Parry: talysarn, nantlle valley, yr haf a cherddi eraill, the summer and other poems, y llwynog, the fox, cynghanedd, welsh-language poetry. Thomas Parnell: chester, anglo-irish, trinity college dublin, the hermit, a night-piece on death, scriblerus club, anne minchin, robert harley.
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.
The world around them
R. Williams Parry
Thomas Parnell
Emotional landscapes
R. Williams Parry: Longing, Sorrow, Despair. Thomas Parnell: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality.