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
Philip Bourke Marston
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.
Strongly related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 71%
Blended 71%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Philip Bourke Marston was born in London on 13 August 1850 and died there on 13 February 1887, only thirty-six years later. His short life was shaped by an unusually concentrated mixture of literary privilege, physical disability, bereavement, emotional intensity, and artistic determination. During his lifetime he was admired by prominent writers, including Algernon Charles Swinburne, and was known in literary circle…
“If I only could sleep!”
In time
R. Williams Parry
Philip Bourke Marston
1850
1956
They overlapped for 4 years (1884–1887).
When R. Williams Parry was born, Philip Bourke Marston was about 34.
R. Williams Parry was about 3 when Philip Bourke Marston died.
On the map
About 338 km separate Talysarn, Gwynedd, Wales from London, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom.
R. Williams Parry
Philip Bourke Marston
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. Philip Bourke Marston: london, john westland marston, algernon charles swinburne, song-tide and other poems, all in all, blindness, victorian poetry, pre-raphaelite.
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
While their lives overlapped
Notable events from the years they were both alive.
R. Williams Parry
Philip Bourke Marston
1873
Loss of Vision
Emotional landscapes
R. Williams Parry: Longing, Sorrow, Despair. Philip Bourke Marston: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness.