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.
Cecil Frances Alexander, born Cecil Frances Humphreys on 14 April 1818 and dead on 12 October 1895, became one of the most widely sung and influential hymn writers of the nineteenth century. Her name may be less immediately familiar than the opening lines of her best-known hymns, yet “Once in Royal David’s City,” “All Things Bright and Beautiful,” “There Is a Green Hill Far Away,” and “Jesus Calls Us o’er the Tumult”…
“literary sacrilege—sacrilege against the dead in that which was best and noblest of them”
Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa was born in Lisbon on 13 June 1888 and died there on 30 November 1935, leaving behind a body of work so various, unfinished, and deliberately dispersed among invented authors that it altered the possibilities of modern literature. During his lifetime he published relatively little in book form and knew neither broad public fame nor financial ease. After his death, however, the vast ar…
They overlapped for 8 years (1888–1895).
When Fernando Pessoa was born, Cecil Frances Alexander was about 70.
Fernando Pessoa was about 7 when Cecil Frances Alexander died.
About 1,643 km separate
Dublin, Ireland from
Lisbon, Portugal.
Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.
Cecil Frances Alexander:
anglo-irish protestant, william alexander, once in royal david's city, all things bright and beautiful, there is a green hill far away, jesus calls us o’er the tumult, hymns for little children, verses for holy seasons.
Fernando Pessoa:
lisbon, heteronyms, mário de sá-carneiro, orpheu, alberto caeiro, álvaro de campos, ricardo reis, durban.
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.
