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.
Alfred Austin
William Watson
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
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…
“Tears are often the telescope by which men see far into heaven.”
William Watson was born on 2 August 1858 at Burley-in-Wharfedale, Yorkshire, and died on 11 August 1935 at Ditchling, Sussex. During his lifetime he occupied a curious and at times conspicuous place in English literary culture. He was praised as one of the finest inheritors of the Victorian poetic tradition, repeatedly mentioned as a possible Poet Laureate, admired for his disciplined music and moral seriousness, and…
“We cannot believe that he criticiseth best who loveth best all styles both great and small.”
About 19 km separate Leeds, Yorkshire, England from Burley-in-Wharfedale, Yorkshire, England. Both have ground in Yorkshire.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Alfred Austin: headingley, leeds, poet laureate, the garden that i love, the tower of babel, savonarola, stonyhurst college, lord salisbury. William Watson: burley-in-wharfedale, liverpool, the prince’s quest, wordsworth’s grave, lachrymae musarum, the purple east, the year of shame, victorian poetic tradition.
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.
Alfred Austin: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness. William Watson: Sorrow, Longing, Despair.
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