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.
Robert Stephen Hawker
Stephen Hawes
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
In the rugged landscape of Victorian Cornwall, where granite cliffs meet the tempestuous Atlantic and ancient legends whisper through the mist, there lived a man whose life embodied the very essence of romantic poetry. Robert Stephen Hawker (1803-1875) was not merely a poet who happened to be a clergyman, nor simply a priest who dabbled in verse. He was a singular figure whose eccentric personality, passionate dedica…
“What a life mine would be if it were all written and published in a book.”
Stephen Hawes, born about 1474 and probably dead by about 1523, occupies a fascinating and sometimes awkward place in English literary history. He is neither a major medieval master on the scale of Geoffrey Chaucer nor a fully developed Renaissance poet in the manner of later Tudor writers. Yet this apparent in-betweenness is precisely what makes him important. Hawes wrote at a moment when England was emerging from t…
“For though the day be never so long, At last the bells ringeth to evensong.”
About 407 km separate Plymouth, Devon, England from Suffolk, England. Both have ground in England.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
No overlapping top terms in the poem critiques — any kinship may sit in mood rather than vocabulary.
Robert Stephen Hawker: cornwall, morwenstow, charlotte i'ans, newdigate prize, pompeii, tendrils, records of the western shore, ecclesia. Stephen Hawes: henry vii, the pastime of pleasure, a joyfull meditation to all england, groom of the chamber, wars of the roses, courtly milieu, allegory, graunde amoure.
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
Robert Stephen Hawker: Spirituality, Wonder, Fear. Stephen Hawes: Spirituality, Peace, Tenderness.
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