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 tumultuous landscape of seventeenth-century English literature, few figures shine with such early brilliance yet fade with such puzzling rapidity as Abraham Cowley. Born in 1618 in London, this prodigious poet who published his first collection at fifteen, who dazzled the cavalier court and influenced an entire generation of writers, who was buried in Westminster Abbey beside Chaucer and Spenser, somehow slipp…
“The first minister of state has not so much business in public as a wise man has in private.”
Richard Lovelace, born on 9 December 1617 and dead by 1657, occupies a distinctive place in English literary history as one of the finest poets associated with the Cavalier tradition. His name is inseparable from two of the most frequently quoted lyrics of the seventeenth century: “I could not love thee, Dear, so much, / Loved I not Honour more” and “Stone walls do not a prison make, / Nor iron bars a cage.” Such mem…
Neighbourhood:
Cavalier Poets, Love Poets, Metaphysical Poets, Restoration Poets
They overlapped for 40 years (1618–1657).
When Abraham Cowley was born, Richard Lovelace was about 1.
Abraham Cowley was about 39 when Richard Lovelace died.
Abraham Cowley:
london, westminster abbey, edmund spenser, the faerie queene, westminster school, trinity college cambridge, english civil war, royalist.
Richard Lovelace:
cavalier tradition, charterhouse school, gloucester hall, to althea, from prison, to lucasta, going to the warres, sir william lovelace, george goring, royalist.
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.
