Alexander Montgomerie, born about 1545 and dead by August 1598, occupies a singular position in Scottish literary history: he was at once court poet, soldier, religious dissenter, satirist, lyricist, and maker of one of the most enduring allegorical poems in the Scots language. His career unfolded during the reign of James VI of Scotland, before that king inherited the English throne as James I, and it reflects the p…
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
Alexander Montgomerie
Poet B
Richard Lovelace
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 73%
Poems 88%
Blended 79%
Swap sides
Another related pair
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…
In time
Alexander Montgomerie
Richard Lovelace
1545
1657
Their lives did not overlap.
19 years separate the earlier death from the later birth.
On the map
About 609 km separate Ayrshire, Scotland from Woolwich, Kent, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom.
Alexander Montgomerie
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
Alexander Montgomerie: scottish, court poet, james vi, flyting betwixt montgomerie and polwart, the cherrie and the slae, ayrshire, catholic, protestant reformation. 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.
The world around them
Alexander Montgomerie
Richard Lovelace
Emotional landscapes
Alexander Montgomerie: Longing, Tenderness, Wonder. Richard Lovelace: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness.