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
Lady Nairne
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.”
Carolina Oliphant, later Lady Nairne, was born on 16 August 1766 at Gask House in Perthshire, into a family whose private memories were inseparable from one of Scotland’s most public historical wounds. She died on 26 October 1845, also at Gask, after a life of seventy-nine years in which she became one of the most accomplished and widely loved writers of Scottish song. For much of that life, however, the public did n…
“My money is not yet exhausted, and I want you to tell me if you have any object to promote before it is all gone.”
About 657 km separate Plymouth, Devon, England from Gask House, Perthshire, Scotland. Shared ground: United Kingdom.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Robert Stephen Hawker: cornwall, morwenstow, charlotte i'ans, newdigate prize, pompeii, tendrils, records of the western shore, ecclesia. Lady Nairne: gask house, perthshire, jacobite songs, the land o' the leal, will ye no come back again?, robert burns, major william murray nairne, mrs bogan of bogan.
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.
Robert Stephen Hawker: Spirituality, Wonder, Fear. Lady Nairne: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness.
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