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.
Barry Cornwall
Thomas Osbert Mordaunt
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Bryan Waller Procter, known to generations of readers by the literary name Barry Cornwall, was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, on 21 November 1787, and died in London on 5 October 1874. He belonged to that broad, fascinating company of early nineteenth-century writers who stood close to the great Romantic generation without ever wholly entering its innermost circle. He was not a poet of Byron’s volcanic self-dramatization,…
“My mother was simply the kindest and tenderest mother in the world.”
Thomas Osbert Mordaunt, born in 1730 and dead on 13 February 1809, occupies an unusual but revealing place in eighteenth-century British culture. He was a career cavalry officer who rose to the rank of lieutenant-general, a man connected by birth and service to the highest military and courtly circles, and the author of a short poem whose best-known stanza has outlived nearly everything else he wrote. “One crowded ho…
About 273 km separate Leeds, Yorkshire, England from London, England. Both have ground in London.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Barry Cornwall: leeds, charles lamb, adelaide anne procter, dramatic scenes and other poems, the life of edmund kean, english songs, the sea, touch us gently, time!. Thomas Osbert Mordaunt: lieutenant-general, battle of warburg, the call, georgian britain, colonel charles mordaunt, princess augusta, richard howe, william howe.
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.
Barry Cornwall: Longing, Wonder, Tenderness. Thomas Osbert Mordaunt: Tenderness, Sorrow, Longing.
Install V2Melody
Add a home-screen icon for quicker listening in a simple app window.