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.
Sir Lewis Morris
Laurence Binyon
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 landscape of Victorian poetry, few figures embodied the tensions between tradition and modernity, between Welsh heritage and English literary ambition, quite like Sir Lewis Morris. Born on a cold January morning in 1833 in Carmarthen, Wales, and dying in the twilight of the Edwardian era in 1907, Morris lived through one of the most transformative periods in British history. His life and work provide a fascina…
“That spirit is not to be caught by such devices.”
Laurence Binyon was born in Lancaster, England, on 10 August 1869, and died in Reading on 10 March 1943. During his lifetime he occupied an unusual and influential place in British cultural life: he was a poet, dramatist, translator, art historian, museum curator, critic, and lecturer. Yet public memory has narrowed him, often understandably, to the author of “For the Fallen,” the 1914 poem whose most famous stanza h…
“But what is rhythm? No one seems to know precisely, though we can often recognise what we cannot define.”
About 264 km separate Carmarthen, Wales from Lancaster, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Sir Lewis Morris: carmarthen, victorian poetry, anglo-welsh school, songs of two worlds, the epic of hades, alfred tennyson, florence julia pollard, jesus college oxford. Laurence Binyon: lancaster, for the fallen, cicely margaret powell, the times, british museum, trinity college, painting in the far east, the flight of the dragon.
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.
Sir Lewis Morris: Longing, Sorrow, Despair. Laurence Binyon: Wonder, Longing, Peace.
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