Compare Poets

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.

Poet A

Witter Bynner Witter Bynner

Poet B

Alfred Austin Alfred Austin
Compare two related contemporaries

A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.

Kindred spirits
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 67% Poems 86% Blended 75%
Swap sides Another related pair
Witter Bynner

Witter Bynner

10 August 1881 – 1 June 1968 (~87)
4 live poems · English

Harold Witter Bynner, who published almost always as Witter Bynner and was known to friends as “Hal,” was born on 10 August 1881 in Brooklyn, New York, and died on 1 June 1968 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His long career carried him through several distinct literary eras: the cultivated, metrically formal verse of the early twentieth century; the disruptions and provocations of modernism; the American enthusiasm for Asia…

“The outstanding English poets have been acutely concerned with the happiness of their fellow men and have given themselves warmly to public causes in which they believed.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Imagist Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets, Modernist Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Spirituality
Alfred Austin

Alfred Austin

30 May 1835 – 2 June 1913 (~78)
17 live poems · English

Alfred Austin was born on 30 May 1835 at Headingley, then a village just outside Leeds in Yorkshire, and died on 2 June 1913 at Ashford, Kent. For seventeen years, from 1896 until his death, he held the conspicuous and difficult office of Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom. Yet his name has endured less securely than those of the poets who preceded and surrounded him. To later readers, Austin has often appeared chie…

“To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.”

Neighbourhood: Edwardian Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness

In time

Witter Bynner
Alfred Austin
1835 1968
They overlapped for 33 years (1881–1913). When Witter Bynner was born, Alfred Austin was about 46. Witter Bynner was about 32 when Alfred Austin died.

On the map

About 5,403 km separate Brooklyn, New York, USA from Leeds, Yorkshire, England. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

Themes they return to

Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.

Shared

From the biographies

social

Witter Bynner: brooklyn, santa fe, harvard university, young harvard, grenstone poems, spectrism, emanuel morgan, kiang kang-hu. Alfred Austin: headingley, leeds, poet laureate, the garden that i love, the tower of babel, savonarola, stonyhurst college, lord salisbury.

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.

Romance
Witter Bynner
83% love
Compare
Love's Unity
Alfred Austin
Romance
Witter Bynner
78% love, self
Compare
The Dregs of Love
Alfred Austin
Sands
Witter Bynner
77% world
Compare
A Sleepless Night
Alfred Austin
Romance
Witter Bynner
76% love
Compare
An Answer
Alfred Austin
Romance
Witter Bynner
75%
Compare
Go talk to her, sweet flower
Alfred Austin
Romance
Witter Bynner
74%
Compare
A Sleepless Night
Alfred Austin

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Witter Bynner: Wonder, Longing, Spirituality. Alfred Austin: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness.

Skip to main content