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.
William Drummond
Richard Lovelace
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
William Drummond of Hawthornden was born on 13 December 1585 at Hawthornden, the family estate overlooking the River Esk near Lasswade in Midlothian, and died there on 4 December 1649. He belongs among the most accomplished Scottish poets of the early seventeenth century, though his reputation has long been complicated by the apparent contradictions in his work and character. He was a Scottish laird who wrote chiefly…
“A friend is a second self.”
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…
About 592 km separate Hawthornden, Midlothian, Scotland from Woolwich, Kent, 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.
William Drummond: hawthornden, midlothian, teares on the death of meliades, poems: amorous, funerall, divine, pastorall, forth feasting, edmund spenser, sir philip sidney, wars of the three kingdoms. Richard Lovelace: cavalier tradition, charterhouse school, gloucester hall, to althea, from prison, to lucasta, going to the warres, sir william lovelace, george goring, royalist.
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.
William Drummond: Sorrow, Spirituality, Wonder. Richard Lovelace: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness.
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