George Wither was born on 11 June 1588 at Bentworth, near Alton in Hampshire, and died on 2 May 1667 in London. His long life stretched across one of the most violently transformative periods in English history: the last years of Elizabeth I, the reigns of James I and Charles I, the Civil Wars, the execution of a king, the Commonwealth and Protectorate, and the Restoration of Charles II. Few English poets lived so fu…
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
George Wither
Poet B
Sir John Davies
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.
Strongly related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 71%
Blended 71%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Sir John Davies, born on 16 April 1569 and dying on 8 December 1626, was one of the most unusually gifted figures of the late Elizabethan and early Stuart world: a poet of intellectual elegance, a lawyer of formidable technical ability, a parliamentarian, an administrator of colonial Ireland, and a man whose life repeatedly exposed the tension between self-command and ambition. His literary reputation rests principal…
“The English laws were not communicated to the Irish, nor the benefit and protection thereof allowed unto them, though they earnestly desired and sought the same.”
In time
George Wither
Sir John Davies
1569
1667
They overlapped for 39 years (1588–1626).
When George Wither was born, Sir John Davies was about 19.
George Wither was about 38 when Sir John Davies died.
On the map
About 72 km separate Bentworth, Hampshire, England from Tisbury, Wiltshire, England. Both have ground in England.
Themes they return to
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
No overlapping top terms in the poem critiques — any kinship may sit in mood rather than vocabulary.
From the biographies
social
George Wither: bentworth, hampshire, prince henry frederick, abuses stript and whipt, the shepherd's hunting, hymnes and songs of the church, william browne, magdalen college. Sir John Davies: tisbury, chicksgrove, orchestra, nosce teipsum, queen's college oxford, middle temple, edmund spenser, christopher marlowe.
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
While their lives overlapped
Notable events from the years they were both alive.
1595
Execution at Tyburn
George Wither
Sir John Davies
Emotional landscapes
George Wither: Sorrow, Longing, Despair. Sir John Davies: Joy, Wonder, Peace.