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.
In the twilight years of Elizabeth I's reign, when England stood poised between the medieval world and the dawning age of Shakespeare, a composer emerged whose voice would capture the profound melancholy and spiritual yearning of a nation in transition. John Ward, born around 1571 and departing this world in 1638, represents one of the most compelling yet enigmatic figures in the pantheon of English Renaissance music…
“The excellent variety of these Compositions hath fed time with fullness, and bred many Censors, more curious than perhaps judicial.”
William Browne of Tavistock, born about 1588 and traditionally thought to have died about 1650, is one of the most attractive and elusive figures in early seventeenth-century English poetry. He was not a major public presence on the scale of Ben Jonson, John Donne, or George Wither, nor did he leave behind the unusually full documentary record that allows historians to reconstruct the lives of some contemporaries. Ye…
Neighbourhood:
Elizabethan Poets, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Renaissance Poets
They overlapped for 51 years (1588–1638).
When William Browne, of Tavistock was born, John Ward was about 17.
William Browne, of Tavistock was about 50 when John Ward died.
John Ward:
canterbury, thomas weelkes, orlando gibbons, upon a bank with roses set, retire my troubled soul, the first set of english madrigals, die now, my heart, elizabethan golden age.
William Browne, of Tavistock:
devonshire, britannia's pastorals, the shepherd's pipe, george wither, exeter college, inner temple, pastoral writing, classical pastoral.
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.
