[Poetry] Poetry Text Book

8/13/2019 [Poetry] Poetry Text Book

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What Is Poetry?Poetry is as universal as language and almost as ancient. The most primitive peoples have used it, and

the most civilized have cultivated it. In all ages and in all countries, poetry has been written, and

eagerly read or listened to, by all kinds and conditions of people by soldiers, states-men, lawyers,farmers, doctors, scientists, clergy, philosophers, kings, and queens. In all ages it has been especially

the concern of the educated, the intelligent, and the sensitive, and it has appealed, in its simpler forms,

to the uneducated and to children. Why? First, because it has given pleasure. People have read it,listened to it, or recited it because they liked it because it gave them enjoyment. But this is not the

whole answer. Poetry in all ages has been regarded as important, not simply as one of several

alternative forms of amusement, as one person might choose bowling, another chess, and another

poetry. Rather, it has been regarded as something central to existence, something having unique value

to the fully realized life, something that we are better off for having and without which we are

spiritually impoverished. To understand the reasons for this, we need to have at least a provisionalunderstanding of what poetry is provisional, because people have always been more successful at

appreciating poetry than at defining it.Initially, poetry might be defined as a kind of language that says more and says it more intensely thandoes ordinary language. To understand this fully, we need to understand what poetry says. For

language is employed on different occasions to say quite different kinds of things; in other words,

language has different uses.

Perhaps the commonest use of language is to communicate information. We say that it is nine oclock,

that we liked a certain movie, that George Washington was the first president of the United States, that

bromine and iodine are members of the halogen group of chemical elements. This we might call the

practical use of language; it helps us with the ordinary business of living.But it is not primarily to communicate information that novels, short stories, plays, and poems are

written. These exist to bring us a sense and a perception of life, to widen and sharpen our contacts with

existence. Their concern is with experience. We all have an inner need to live more deeply and fullyand with greater awareness, to know the experience of others, and to understand our own experience

better. Poets, from their own store of felt, observed, or imagined experiences, select, combine, andreorganize. They create significant new experiences for their readers significant because focused

and formed in which readers can participate and from which they may gain a greater awareness and

understanding of their world. Literature, in other words, can be used as a gear for stepping up the

intensity and increasing the range of our experience and as a glass for clarifying it. This is the literaryuse of language, for literature is not only an aid to living but a means of living.

Suppose, for instance, that we are interested in eagles. If we want simply to acquire information about

eagles, we may turn to an encyclopedia or a book of natural history. There we find that the family

Falconidae, to which eagles belong, is characterized by imperforate nostrils, legs of medium length, a

hooked bill, the hind toe inserted on a level with the three front ones, and the claws roundly curved andsharp; that land eagles are feathered to the toes and sea-fishing eagles halfway to the toes; that their

length is about three feet and their wingspan seven feet; that they usually build their nests on some

inaccessible cliff; that the eggs are spotted and do not exceed three; and perhaps that the eagles greatpower of vision, the vast height to which it soars in the sky, the wild grandeur of its abode, have . . .

commended it to the poets of all nations.

But unless we are interested in this information only for practical purposes, we are likely to feel a littledisappointed, as though we had grasped the feathers of the eagle but not its soul. True, we have learned

many facts about the eagle, but we have missed somehow its lonely majesty, its power, and the wild

grandeur of its surroundings that would make the eagle a living creature rather than a mere museum

specimen. For the living eagle we must turn to literature.


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Poetry takes all life as its province. Its primary concern is not with beauty, not with philosophical truth,

not with persuasion, but with experience. Beauty and philosophical truth are aspects of experience, and

the poet is often engaged with them. But poetry as a whole is concerned with all kinds of experience

beautiful or ugly, strange or common, noble or ignoble, actual or imaginary. One of the paradoxes of

human existence is that all experience even painful experience is, for the good reader, enjoyablewhen transmitted through the medium of art. In real life, death and pain and suffering are not

pleasurable, but in poetry they may be. In real life, getting soaked in a rainstorm is not pleasurable, butin poetry it can be. In actual life, if we cry, usually we are unhappy; but if we cry in a movie, we are

manifestly enjoying it. We do not ordinarily like to be terrified in real life, but we sometimes seekmovies or books that will terrify us. We find some value in all intense living. To be intensely alive is

the opposite of being dead. To be dull, to be bored, to be imperceptive is in one sense to be dead.

Poetry comes to us bringing life and therefore pleasure. Moreover, art focuses and organizes experience

so as to give us a better understanding of it. And to understand life is partly to be master of it.

There is no sharp distinction between poetry and other forms of imaginative literature. Although some

beginning readers may believe that poetry can be recognized by the arrangement of its lines on the page

or by its use of rime and meter, such superficial signs are of little worth. The Book of Job in the Bibleand Melvilles Moby Dick are highly poetical, but the familiar verse that begins: Thirty days hath

September, I April, June, and November. . . is not. The difference between poetry and other literatureis one only of degree. Poetry is the most condensed and concentrated form of literature. It is language

whose individual lines, either because of their own brilliance or because they focus so powerfully what

has gone before, have a higher voltage than most language. It is language that grows frequently

incandescent, giving off both light and heat.Ultimately, therefore, poetry can be recognized only by the response made to it by a good reader,

someone who has acquired some sensitivity to poetry. But there is a catch here. We are not all good

readers. To a poor reader, poetry will often seem dull and boring, a fancy way of writing something

that could be said more simply. So might a color-blind man deny that there is such a thing as color.The act of communication involved in reading poetry is like the act of communication involved in

receiving a message by radio. Two devices are required: a transmitting station and a receiving set. The

complete-ness of the communication depends on both the power and clarity of the transmitter and the

sensitivity and tuning of the receiver. When a person reads a poem and no experience is received, either

the poem is not a good poem or the reader is a poor reader or not properly tuned. With new poetry, we

cannot always be sure which is at fault. With older poetry, if it has acquired critical acceptance has

been enjoyed by generations of good readers we may assume that the receiving set is at fault.

Fortunately, the fault is not irremediable. Though we cannot all become expert readers, we can becomegood enough to find both pleasure and value in much good poetry, or we can increase the amount of

pleasure we already find in poetry and the number of kinds of poetry in which we find it. The purpose

of this book is to help you increase your sensitivity and range as a receiving set.Poetry, finally, is a kind of multidimensional language. Ordinary language the kind that we use to

communicate information is one-dimensional. It is directed at only part of the listener, the

understanding. Its one dimension is intellectual. Poetry, which is language used to communicate

experience, has at least four dimensions. If it is to communicate experience, it must be directed at the

whole person, not just at your understanding. It must involve not only your intelligence but also yoursenses, emotions, and imagination. To the intellectual dimension, poetry adds a sensuous dimension, an

emotional dimension, and an imaginative dimension.

Poetry achieves its extra dimensions its greater pressure per word and its greater tension per poem

by drawing more fully and more consistently than does ordinary language on a number of language

resources, none of which is peculiar to poetry. These various resources form the subjects of a number

of the following chapters. Among them are connotation, imagery, metaphor, symbol, paradox, irony,

allusion, sound repetition, rhythm, and pattern. Using these resources and the materials of life, the poet


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shapes and makes a poem. Successful poetry is never effusive language. If it is to come alive it must be

an organism whose every part serves a useful purpose and cooperates with every other part to preserve

and express the life that is within it.

ARS POETICAby Archibald MacLeish

A poem should be palpable and mute

As a globed fruit,Dumb

As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as he sleeve-worn stone

Of casement ledges where the moss has grown-

A poem should be wordless

As the flight of birds

A poem should be motionless in timeAs the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases

Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,

Memory by memory the mind-

A poem should be motionless in time

As the moon climbs.

A poem should be equal to:

Not true.For all the history of grief

An empty doorway and a maple leaf.For love

The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea-

A poem should not mean

But be.

ARISTOTLE (from The Poetics):"Imitation comes naturally to human beings from childhood; so does the universal pleasure inimitation. We take delight in viewing the most accurate possible images of objects which in

themselves even cause distress when we see them (e.g. the shapes of the lowest species of animal, and

corpses). The reason for this is that understanding is extremely pleasant, not just for philosophers but

for others too in the same way, despite their limited capacity for it. This is the reason why people take

delight in seeing images; what happens is that as they view them they come to understand and work outwhat each thing is (e.g., 'This is so-and-so.')"

SAMUEL JOHNSON (from Preface to Shakespeare):"The end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing."


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SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (from Biographia Literaria):"A poem is that species of composition, which is opposed to works of science, by proposing for its

immediate object pleasure, not truth; and . . . discriminated by proposing to itself such delight from the

whole, as is compatible with a distinct gratification from each component part."

"The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man into activity, with thesubordination of faculties to each other, according to their relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone

and spirit of unity, that blends, and (as it were) fuses, each into each, by that synthetic and magical

power, to which we have exclusively appropriated the name of imagination."

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (from Preface to Lyrical Ballads):"Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in

tranquility: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquility gradually

disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was the subject of contemplation, is gradually

produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind."

"Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in thecountenance of all science. Emphatically it may be said of the poet, as Shakespeare has said of man,

"that he looks before and after." He is the rock of defense for human nature; an upholder and preserver,carrying everywhere with him relationship and love. In spite of difference of soil and climate, of

language and manners, of laws and customs: in spite of things silently gone out of mind, and things

violently destroyed; the poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human

society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time."

DOUGLAS McGILL"A piece of writing is poetic when it:"

Sings

2. Moves3. Shimmers

4. Cracks the whip5. Has an indefinable "woo woo" quality

6. Recreates the early childhood pleasures of moon, Mom, and mud

7. Forces an epiphany

8. Imitates nature9. Contains the music of plain speech

10. Marries sound and meaning

11. Just sounds good

12. Shatters self-important, secluded views of the world

13. Snaps you into a different state of mind14. Sets off your indicator lights

15. Is the exact opposite of a gazebungle

16. Connects the reader with an interior "otherness," sort of like music17. Brings the whole soul of man into activity

18. Offers the most accurate possible symbolic image of objects which when they are actually seen

cause distress (corpses, worms, etc.)19. Instructs by pleasing

20. Proposes pleasure, not truth, as the immediate object of attention

21. Creates a sort of religious feeling

22. Is nothing else, so is poetic by default


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23. Remembers things silently gone out of mind

24. Induces movement by precise expression

25. Transforms contemplated emotion into actual, felt emotion

26. Breathes the finer spirit of all knowledge

27. Looks before and after28. Sees relationships and love everywhere

29. Binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society30. Feels as if it was always intended to be written as a poem and does not feel like prose in drag

31. Achieves a certain level of song that exceeds the limits of human language32. Causes a crackling blue spark to arc from the page to the reader's mind

33. Purges pity and terror

34. Ritualistically recalls horrible memories in loving detail

35. Is news that stays news

36. Hits you with a brick

37. Lives beautifully for a moment and then dies

38. Burns for the joy of it39. Rings your bell

40. Lifts you off.

BILLY COLLINS"Introduction To Poetry"

I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light

like a color slideor press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem

and watch him probe his way out,or walk inside the poem's room

and feel the walls for a light switch.I want them to waterski

across the surface of a poem

waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to dois tie the poem to a chair with rope

and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose

to find out what it really means.

ROBERT FROST"A poem begins with a lump in the throat, a home-sickness or a love-sickness. It is a reaching-out

toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where the emotion has foundits thought and the thought has found the words."

First published inRobert Frost: The Man and His Work. New York: Henry Holt, 1923.

ROBERT PINSKY"Poetry...is an ancient art or technology: older than the computer, older than print, older than writing

and indeed, though some may find this surprising, much older than prose. I presume that the


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Sir Thomas Wyatt(15031542) was born in Kent and educated at St. Johns College, Cambridge. He

spent most of his life as a courtier and diplomat, serving King Henry VIII as ambassador to Spain and

as a member of several missions to Italy and France. These travels introduced Wyatt to Italian writers

of the High Renaissance, whose work he translated, thus introducing the sonnet form into English. He

was arrested twice and charged with treason, sent to the Tower of London, and acquitted in 1541.Aristocratic poets at the time rarely published their poems themselves: Works circulated in manuscript

and in published collections (miscellanies) gathered by printers. The most important of these is avolume published by Richard Tottel in 1557 titled Songs and Sonnets but more commonly known as

Tottels Miscellany, which includes ninety-seven of Wyatts sonnets and delightful lyrics.

THEY flee from me

THEY flee from me, that sometime did me seek,

With naked foot stalking within my chamber :Once have I seen them gentle, tame, and meek,

That now are wild, and do not once remember,That sometime they have put themselves in dangerTo take bread at my hand ; and now they range

Busily seeking in continual change.

Thanked be Fortune, it hath been otherwise

Twenty times better ; but once especial,

In thin array, after a pleasant guise,

When her loose gown did from her shoulders fall,

And she me caught in her arms long and small,And therewithal sweetly did me kiss,

And softly said, ' Dear heart, how like you this ?'

It was no dream ; for I lay broad awaking :But all is turn'd now through my gentleness,

Into a bitter fashion of forsaking ;And I have leave to go of her goodness ;

And she also to use new fangleness.

But since that I unkindly so am served :

How like you this, what hath she now deserved ?


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Edmund Spenser(15521599), a contemporary of William Shakespeare, was the greatest nondramatic

poet of his time. Best known for his romantic and national epic The Faerie Queene, Spenser wrote

poems of a number of other types as well and was important as an innovator in metrics and form (as in

his development of the special form of sonnet that bears his nameSpenserian Sonnet). One day I

wrote her name upon the strand is number 75 in Amoretti, a sequence of sonnets about a courtshipaddressed to a woman named Elizabeth, probably Elizabeth Boyle, who became his second wife.

Amoretti LXXV: One Day I Wrote her Name

1One day I wrote her name upon the strand,

2But came the waves and washed it away:

3Again I wrote it with a second hand,

4But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.

5"Vain man," said she, "that dost in vain assay,6A mortal thing so to immortalize;

7For I myself shall like to this decay,

8And eke my name be wiped out likewise."9"Not so," (quod I) "let baser things devise

10To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:

11My verse your vertues rare shall eternize,

12And in the heavens write your glorious name:

13Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,

14Our love shall live, and later life renew."


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Sir Philip Sidney(15541586) was born into an important aristocratic family in Elizabethan England.

He attended Shrewsbury School and Oxford University, although he left without a degree and

completed his education through extended travel on the Continent. He was the epitome of the well-

rounded courtier idealized in his era, excelling as a soldier, writer, literary patron, and diplomat. He

was the author of an important work of prose fiction (Arcadia), a landmark essay in literary criticism(The Defense of Poesy), and an important sonnet cycle (Astrophil and Stella, which includes Loving

in truth, and fain in verse my love to show). His poetry has been labeled news from the heart.

Sonnet XXXIX

Come Sleep! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace,

The baiting place of wit, the balm of woe,

The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release,

The indifferent judge between the high and low;With shield of proof, shield me from out the prease

Of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw;O make in me those civil wars to cease;

I will good tribute pay, if thou do so.

Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,

A chamber deaf to noise and blind to light,A rosy garland and a weary head:

And if these things, as being thine by right,

Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me,

Livelier than elsewhere, Stella's image see.


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William Shakespeare(1564-1616) was born at Stratford-on-Avon in April 1564. His father became an

important public figure, rising to the position of high bailiff (equivalent to mayor) of Stratford.

Although we know practically nothing of his personal life, we may assume that Shakespeare received a

decent grammar school education in literature, logic, and Latin (though not in mathematics or natural

science). When he was eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway, eight years his senior; six months latertheir son was born. Two years later, Anne bore twins.

We do not know how the young Shakespeare supported his family, and we do not hear of him againuntil 1592, when a rival London playwright sarcastically refers to him as an "upstart crow."

Shakespeare seems to have prospered in the London theater world. He probably began as an actor, andearned enough as author and part owner of his company's theaters to acquire property.

His sonnets, which were written during the 1590s, reveal rich and varied interests. Some are addressed

to an attractive young man (whom the poet urges to marry); others to the mysterious dark lady; still

others suggest a love triangle of two men and a woman. His dramas include historical plays based on

English dynastic struggles; comedies, both festive and dark; romances such asPericles(1608) and

Cymbeline (1611) that cover decades in the lives of their characters; and the great tragedies:Hamlet

(1602), Othello(1604),King Lear(1605), andMacbeth(1606).

Sonnet XII

When I do count the clock that tells the time,

And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;

When I behold the violet past prime,

And sable curls, all silvered o'er with white;

When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,

And summer's green all girded up in sheaves,

Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,Then of thy beauty do I question make,

That thou among the wastes of time must go,Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake

And die as fast as they see others grow;

And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence

Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.


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Sonnet XVIII

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date:Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou growest:So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

Sonnet XXIX

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,And look upon myself, and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,

Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,

Haply I think on thee,-- and then my state,

Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate,;

For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.


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Sonnet XXX

When to the sessions of sweet silent thoughtI summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:

Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,

And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,

And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight:

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before.But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

All losses are restor'd and sorrows end.

Sonnet XCIV

They that have power to hurt, and will do none,

That do not do the thing they most do show,

Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,

Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow;They rightly do inherit heaven's graces,

And husband nature's riches from expense;

They are the lords and owners of their faces,Others, but stewards of their excellence.

The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,

Though to itself, it only live and die,But if that flower with base infection meet,

The basest weed outbraves his dignity:

For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;

Lilies that fester, smell far worse than weeds.


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Sonnet CXVI

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not loveWhich alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come:

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,I never writ, nor no man ever loved


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John Donne(1572-1631). Born in London into a prosperous Roman Catholic family of tradespeople at

a time when England was staunchly anti-Catholic, Donne was forced to leave Oxford without a degree

because of his religion. He studied law and, at the same time, read widely in theology in an attempt to

decide whether the Roman or the Anglican Church was the true Catholic Church, a decision he was not

able to make for many years.In the meantime, he became known as a witty man of the world and the author of original, often dense,

erotic poems. Donne left his law studies, participated in two naval expeditions, and then becamesecretary to a powerful noble, a job he lost when he was briefly sent to prison for secretly marrying his

patron's niece.In 1615, at the age of forty-two, Donne accepted ordination in the Anglican Church. He quickly earned

a reputation as one of the greatest preachers of his time. He was Dean of St. Paul's from 1621 until his

death. In his later years, Donne repudiated the poetry of his youth.

Death Be Not Proud

Death be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not soe,For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,

Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill mee.

From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,

Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,

Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.

Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,

And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then?

One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,

And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die


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Ben Jonson(1572-1637) Known primarily as a writer of comedies such asEvery Man in His Humor

(1598) andEvery Man out of His Humor(1599) in the reign of Elizabeth, Ben Jonson's (1572-1637)

most interesting plays were performed during the reign (called the Jacobean period) of her successor,

King James I. Volpone(1606) and The Alchemist(1610) stand today as Jonson's most often produced

plays. Both are broad comedies: Volponeplays on the foxiness of a dying man who is anxious to seewhich of his heirs is worthy, and The Alchemistis a satire on the wiliness of con men who pretend to

know how to transmute base metal into gold. All of these plays were highly regarded in Jacobeantimes. In addition to his comedies, Jonson's tragedies Sejanus(1603) and Catiline(1611) earned him

the description of "best in tragedy" from a contemporary who maintained a diary devoted to hisexperiences in the theater.

On My First DaughterHere lies, to each her parents' ruth,

Mary, the daughter of their youth;Yet all heaven's gifts being heaven's due,

It makes the father less to rue.At six months' end, she parted henceWith safety of her innocence;

Whose soul heaven's queen, whose name she bears,

In comfort of her mother's tears,

Hath placed amongst her virgin-train:

Where, while that severed doth remain,

This grave partakes the fleshly birth;

Which cover lightly, gentle earth!

On My First SonFarewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.

Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,

Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.

Oh, could I lose all father now ! For why

Will man lament the state he should envy?To have so soon 'scaped world's and flesh's rage,

And if no other misery, yet age !

Rest in soft peace, and, asked, say, Here doth lie

Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry.

For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such

As what he loves may never like too much.


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TO CELIA

DRINK to me, only, with thine eyes,And I will pledge with mine ;

Or leave a kiss but in the cup,

And I'll not look for wine.

The thirst that from the soul doth rise,

Doth ask a drink divine :

But might I of Jove's nectar sup,

I would not change for thine.I sent thee, late, a rosy wreath,

Not so much honoring thee,As giving it a hope, that there

It could not wither'd be.But thou thereon didst only breathe,

And sent'st it back to me :

Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,

Not of itself, but thee.


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John Milton(1608-1674), an English Puritan and a courageous defender of political liberty, defied

both pope and king and was therefore in many respects a prophetic voice of the European opposition to

established authority in the late Renaissance. His service to the Puritan cause during the English Civil

War, including the writing of pamphlets containing strongly held views on public matters, made him a

compelling figure in English society.His great poetry, most of it written in his later years while he was totally blind, left the world its

ineradicable Renaissance version of tragedy, defined as the freedom to seek our own destiny coupledwith the prospect of failure should we overreach ourselves in defiance of God.

Sonnet I.

O Nightingale, that on yon bloomy Spray

Warbl'st at eeve, when all the Woods are still,

Thou with fresh hope the Lovers heart dost fill,While the jolly hours lead on propitiousMay,

Thy liquid notes that close the eye of Day,First heard before the shallow Cuccoo's bill

Portend success in love; O ifJove'swill

Have linkt that amorous power to thy soft lay,

Now timely sing, ere the rude Bird of Hate

Foretell my hopeles doom in som Grove ny:

As thou from yeer to yeer hast sung too late

For my relief; yet hadst no reason why,Whether the Muse, or Love call thee his mate,

Both them I serve, and of their train am I.

Sonnet XVI.When I consider how my light is spent,

E're half my days, in this dark world and wide,

And that one Talent which is death to hide,Lodg'd with me useless, though my Soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and presentMy true account, least he returning chide,

Doth God exact day-labour, light deny'd,

I fondly ask; But patience to prevent

That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need

Either man's work or his own gifts, who best

Bear his milde yoak, they serve him best, his State

Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed


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And post o're Land and Ocean without rest:

They also serve who only stand and waite.

Sonnet XIX.Methought I saw my late espoused Saint

Brought to me likeAlcestisfrom the grave,WhomJovesgreat Son to her glad Husband gave,

Rescu'd from death by force though pale and faint.

Mine as whom washt from spot of child-bed taint,Purification in the old Law did save,

And such, as yet once more I trust to have

Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint,

Came vested all in white, pure as her mind:

Her face was vail'd, yet to my fancied sight,

Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shin'dSo clear, as in no face with more delight.

But O as to embrace me she enclin'dI wak'd, she fled, and day brought back my night.


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The Author to her Book

Thou ill-form'd offspring of my feeble brain,

Who after birth did'st by my side remain,

Till snatcht from thence by friends, less wise than true,Who thee abroad expos'd to public view,

Made thee in rags, halting to th' press to trudge,

Where errors were not lessened (all may judge).At thy return my blushing was not small,

My rambling brat (in print) should mother call.

I cast thee by as one unfit for light,

Thy Visage was so irksome in my sight,

Yet being mine own, at length affection would

Thy blemishes amend, if so I could.I wash'd thy face, but more defects I saw,

And rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw.I stretcht thy joints to make thee even feet,Yet still thou run'st more hobbling than is meet.

In better dress to trim thee was my mind,

But nought save home-spun Cloth, i' th' house I find.

In this array, 'mongst Vulgars mayst thou roam.

In Critics' hands, beware thou dost not come,

And take thy way where yet thou art not known.

If for thy Father askt, say, thou hadst none;And for thy Mother, she alas is poor,

Which caus'd her thus to send thee out of door.


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William Blake(1757-1827). Born in London to an obscure family, Blake was educated at home until

he was ten, then enrolled in a drawing school, advancing ultimately to a formal apprenticeship as an

engraver. At an early age, Blake exhibited talent as both an artist and a poet, and throughout his life

read widely among modern philosophers and poets.

Throughout his life, he experienced mystical visions that provided him with the inspiration for many ofhis poems. Blake devised a process he called illuminated printing, which involved the preparation of

drawings and decorative frames to complement his poems. He published Songs of Innocence(1789)and Songs of Experience(1794) in this fashion. These books, as well as the many subsequent works he

wrote and illustrated, earned him a reputation as one of the most important artists of his day.Many of Blake's works assert his conviction that the established church and state hinder rather than

nurture human freedom and the sense of divine love.

A Little Boy Lost

"Nought loves another as itselfNor venerates another so

Nor is it possible to thoughA greater than itself to know

"And, father, how can I love you

Or any of my brothers more

I love you like the little bir

That picks up crumbs around the door.

The Priest sat by and heard the child

In trembling zeal he seized his hairHe led him by his little coat

And all admired the priestly care.

And standing on the altar high

"Lo, what a fiend is here! said he"One who sets reason up for judgOf our most holy mystery.

The weeping child could not be heard

The weeping parents wept in vain

They stripped him to his little shirtAnd bound him in an iron chain

And burned him in a holy plac

Where many had been burned before

The weeping parents wept in vain

Are such thing done on Albion's shore


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A Little Girl Lost

Children of the future age

Reading this indignant page

Know that in a former timLove, sweet love, was thought a crime

In the age of goldFree from winter's cold

Youth and maiden bright

To the holy light

Naked in the sunny beams delight

Once a youthful pairFilled with softest care

Met in garden brighWhere the holy lighHad just removed the curtains of the night

Then, in rising day

On the grass they play

Parents were afar

Strangers came not near

And the maiden soon forgot her fear

Tired with kisses sweet

They agree to meeWhen the silent slee

Waves o'er heaven's deepAnd the weary tired wanderers weep

To her father whit

Came the maiden brightBut his loving look

Like the holy boo

All her tender limbs with terror shook

"Ona, pale and weakTo thy father speak

Oh the trembling fear

Oh the dismal carThat shakes the blossoms of my hoary hair!


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The Little Black Boy

My mother bore me in the southern wild,

And I am black, but oh my soul is white!

White as an angel is the English child,But I am black, as if bereaved of light.

My mother taught me underneath a tree,And, sitting down before the heat of day,

She took me on her lap and kissed me,

And, pointed to the east, began to say:

"Look on the rising sun: there God does live,

And gives His light, and gives His heat away,And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive

Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.

"And we are put on earth a little space,

That we may learn to bear the beams of love

And these black bodies and this sunburnt face

Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

"For when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear,

The cloud will vanish, we shall hear His voice,Saying, 'Come out from the grove, my love and care

And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice',"

Thus did my mother say, and kissed me;

And thus I say to little English boy.When I from black and he from white cloud free,

And round the tent of God like lambs we joy

I'll shade him from the heat till he can bearTo lean in joy upon our Father's knee;

And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,

And be like him, and he will then love me.


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The Tyger

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forest of the night

What immortal hand or eyeCould frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skiesBurnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare seize the fire?

And What shoulder, and what art,

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?And when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand? and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? what dread grasp

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,

And watered heaven with their tears,Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forests of the night,What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?


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The Lamb

Little Lamb, who made thee?

Dost thou know who made thee?

Gave thee life, and bid thee feed,By the stream and o'er the mead;

Gave thee clothing of delight,

Softest clothing, woolly, bright;Gave thee such a tender voice,

Making all the vales rejoice?

Little Lamb, who made thee?

Dost thou know who made thee?

Little Lamb, I'll tell thee,Little Lamb, I'll tell thee.

He is called by thy name,For He calls Himself a Lamb.He is meek, and He is mild;

He became a little child.

I a child, and thou a lamb,

We are called by His name.

Little Lamb, God bless thee!

Little Lamb, God bless thee!


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RobertBurns(1759-1796). Born in Scotland to a family of poor tenant farmers, Burns was working in

the fields with his father by age twelve. During these early years, the family moved often in fruitless

attempts to improve its lot. Although Burns received formal education only intermittently, he read

widely on his own.

After the death of his father, Burns and his brother worked vainly to make their farm pay, an effortBurns was able to abandon when his first volume of poetry,Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect

(1786) brought him overnight fame. One result of this fame was his appointment as an excise officer, aposition that gave him some financial security while he continued to write poetry. Burns's humble

origins instilled in him a lifelong sympathy for the poor and downtrodden, the rebels and iconoclasts, aswell as a disdain for religion, particularly Calvinism and what he considered the hypocrisy of its

"devout" ministers.

A Red, Red Rose

O, my Luve's like a red, red rose,That's newly sprung in June.

O, my Luve's like a melodieThat's sweetly play'd in tune.

As fair as thou, my bonnie lass,

So deep in luve am I;And I will love thee still, my dear,

Till a' the seas gang dry.

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,And the rocks melt wi' the sun:

I will love thess till, my dear,

While the sands o' life shall run:

And fare thee well, my only luve!

And fare thee weel, a while!

And I will come again, my luve,

Tho' it ware ten thousand mile


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Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn


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I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed---and gazed---but little thoughtWhat wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lieIn vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils


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To a Skylark

Ethereal minstrel! pilgrim of the sky!

Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound?

Or, while the wings aspire, are heart and eyeBoth with thy nest upon the dewy ground?

Thy nest which thou canst drop into at will,

Those quivering wings composed, that music still!Leave to the nightingale her shady wood;

A privacy of glorious light is thine;

Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood

Of harmony, with instinct more divine;

Type of the wise who soar, but never roam;

True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home!


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Samuel Taylor Coleridge(1772-1834) was born in a small village in southern England, but after the

death of his father he was sent to school in London. Despite his indolence, he could also be

sporadically brilliant, and at nineteen he entered Cambridge University, where his lack of discipline

overwhelmed him, and he was unable to complete his degree.

In 1794 Coleridge met the young poet Robert Southey and, filled with the fervor of the FrenchRevolution, they decided to establish a utopian colony in Pennsylvania. Their plans fell apart, but

Coleridge, as part of the plan, had married the sister of Southey's fiance. The marriage was as unhappyas everything else Coleridge had attempted. The next year he met William Wordsworth and soon

moved close to where the older poet and his sister Dorothy were living in England. Writing together, ina fever of excitement, he and Wordsworth completed the small collection titledLyrical Ballads, which

was published in 1798. With their book they attempted to write a new kind of poetry, closer to ordinary

speech and drawing from everyday emotions. Coleridge's contribution was the long supernatural

narrative "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and several shorter poems.

Coleridge by this time was addicted to opium, and his writing became chaotically uneven. "Kubla

Khan" is the best known of his drug-influenced poems. When he later overcame his addiction he

became one of the most important literary theorists and critics of the early nineteenth century. Hislifelong friend, the writer Charles Lamb, described Coleridge as "an archangel, slightly damaged."

Kubla Khan

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree :

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to manDown to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round :And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh ! that deep romantic chasm which slantedDown the green hill athwart a cedarn cover !

A savage place ! as holy and enchanted

As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her demon-lover !

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,

A mighty fountain momently was forced :Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst

Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,

Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail :

And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever

It flung up momently the sacred river.

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion

Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,

Then reached the caverns measureless to man,


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And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean :

And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far

Ancestral voices prophesying war !

The shadow of the dome of pleasure

Floated midway on the waves ;Where was heard the mingled measure

From the fountain and the caves.It was a miracle of rare device,

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice !

A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw :

It was an Abyssinian maid,

And on her dulcimer she played,

Singing of Mount Abora.

Could I revive within meHer symphony and song,

To such a deep delight 'twould win me,That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome ! those caves of ice !

And all who heard should see them there,And all should cry, Beware ! Beware !

His flashing eyes, his floating hair !

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread,For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise.


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To the Nightingale

Sister of love-lorn Poets, Philomel!

How many Bards in city garret pent,While at their window they with downward eye

Mark the faint lamp-beam on the kennell'd mud,And listen to the drowsy cry of Watchmen

(Those hoarse unfeather'd Nightingales of Time!),How many wretched Bards address thy name,

And hers, the full-orb'd Queen that shines above.

But I do hear thee, and the high bough mark,

Within whose mild moon-mellow'd foliage hid

Thou warblest sad thy pity-pleading strains.

O! I have listen'd, till my working soul,

Waked by those strains to thousand phantasies,Absorb'd hath ceas'd to listen! Therefore oft,

I hymn thy name: and with a proud delightOft will I tell thee, Minstrel of the Moon!

'Most musical, most melancholy' Bird!

That all thy soft diversities of tone,

Tho' sweeter far than the delicious airs

That vibrate from a white-arm'd Lady's harp,

What time the languishment of lonely loveMelts in her eye, and heaves her breast of snow,

Are not so sweet as is the voice of her,

My Sara - best beloved of human kind!When breathing the pure soul of tenderness,

She thrills me with the Husband's promis'd name


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Percy Bysshe Shelley(1792-1822). Born near Horsham, England, Shelley was the son of a wealthy

landowner who sat in Parliament. At University College, Oxford, he befriended Thomas Jefferson

Hogg. Both became interested in radical philosophy and quickly became inseparable. After one year at

Oxford they were expelled together for writing and circulating a pamphlet entitled "The Necessity of

Atheism." Shelley married Harriet Westbrook soon after leaving Oxford. Though they had twochildren, the marriage was unsuccessful, and in 1814, Shelley left Harriet for Mary Wollstonecraft

Godwin (author ofFrankenstein [1818]). After Harriet's death (an apparent suicide), Shelley andGodwin were married.

Escaping legal problems in England, he settled in Pisa, Italy, in 1820, and died in a sailing accidentbefore his thirtieth birthday. A playwright and essayist as well as a romantic poet, Shelley is admired

for his dramatic poem "Prometheus Unbound" (1820).

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique landWho said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear --

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.'


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The Cloud

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,

From the seas and the streams;

I bear light shade for the leaves when laidIn their noonday dreams.

From my wings are shaken the dews that waken

The sweet buds every one,When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,

As she dances about the sun.

I wield the flail of the lashing hail,

And whiten the green plains under,

And then again I dissolve it in rain,

And laugh as I pass in thunder.

I sift the snow on the mountains below,And their great pines groan aghast;And all the night 'tis my pillow white,

While I sleep in the arms of the blast.

Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,

Lightning, my pilot, sits;

In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,

It struggles and howls at fits;

Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,

This pilot is guiding me,

Lured by the love of the genii that moveIn the depths of the purple sea;

Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,Over the lakes and the plains,

Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,

The Spirit he loves remains;

And I all the while bask in Heaven's blue smile,Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes,

And his burning plumes outspread,

Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,When the morning star shines dead;

As on the jag of a mountain crag,

Which an earthquake rocks and swings,An eagle alit one moment may sit

In the light of its golden wings.

And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,Its ardors of rest and of love,

And the crimson pall of eve may fall

From the depth of Heaven above,


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With wings folded I rest, on mine aery nest,

As still as a brooding dove.

That orbed maiden with white fire laden,

Whom mortals call the Moon,

Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,By the midnight breezes strewn;

And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,Which only the angels hear,

May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,The stars peep behind her and peer;

And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,

Like a swarm of golden bees,

When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,

Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,

Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,

Are each paved with the moon and these.

I bind the Sun's throne with a burning zone,And the Moon's with a girdle of pearl;

The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim

When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.

From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,Over a torrent sea,

Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,--

The mountains its columns be.

The triumphal arch through which I marchWith hurricane, fire, and snow,

When the Powers of the air are chained to my chair,

Is the million-colored bow;

The sphere-fire above its soft colors wove,

While the moist Earth was laughing below.

I am the daughter of Earth and Water,

And the nursling of the Sky;I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;

I change, but I cannot die.

For after the rain when with never a stainThe pavilion of Heaven is bare,

And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams

Build up the blue dome of air,

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,

And out of the caverns of rain,Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,

I arise and unbuild it again.


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To A Skylark

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!

Bird thou never wert,That from Heaven, or near it,

Pourest thy full heartIn profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher

From the earth thou springest

Like a cloud of fire;

The blue deep thou wingest,

And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightningOf the sunken sun

O'er which clouds are bright'ning,Thou dost float and run,

Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple evenMelts around thy flight;

Like a star of Heaven

In the broad daylight

Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight:

Keen as are the arrows

Of that silver sphere,

Whose intense lamp narrows

In the white dawn clear

Until we hardly see--we feel that it is there.

All the earth and airWith thy voice is loud.

As, when night is bare,

From one lonely cloudThe moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.

What thou art we know not;

What is most like thee?

From rainbow clouds there flow notDrops so bright to see

As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

Like a poet hidden

In the light of thought,

Singing hymns unbidden,

Till the world is wrought


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Waking or asleep,

Thou of death must deem

Things more true and deep

Than we mortals dream,Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after,

And pine for what is not:Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet if we could scorn

Hate, and pride, and fear;

If we were things bornNot to shed a tear,

I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures

Of delightful sound,

Better than all treasuresThat in books are found,

Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladnessThat thy brain must know,

Such harmonious madness

From my lips would flow

The world should listen then, as I am listening now!


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Mutability

We are the clouds that veil the midnight moon;

How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,Streaking the darkness radiantly!--yet soon

Night closes round, and they are lost forever:

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant stringsGive various response to each varying blast,

To whose frail frame no second motion brings

One mood or modulation like the last.

We rest.--A dream has power to poison sleep;

We rise.--One wandering thought pollutes the day;

We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;Embrace fond foe, or cast our cares away:

It is the same!--For, be it joy or sorrow,

The path of its departure still is free:

Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;

Nought may endure but Mutability.


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John Keats(1795-1821) was born in London, the eldest son of a stablekeeper who died in an accident

in 1804. His mother died of tuberculosis shortly after remarrying, and the grandmother who raised

Keats and his siblings died in 1814.

At eighteen, Keats wrote his first poem, "Imitation of Spenser," inspired by Edmund Spenser's long

narrative poem The Faerie Queene. The thirty-three poems he wrote while training to be a surgeonwere published in 1817, and Keats then gave up medicine for writing.

After more traumatic losses in 1818, including the departure of one brother for America and the deathof his other brother of tuberculosis, Keats wrote his second collection,Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St.

Agnes, and Other Poems(1820). Ill with tuberculosis himself, Keats was sent to Rome to recover. Hedied at twenty-six, but despite his short career, he is a major figure of the romantic period.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,

Alone and palely loitering?The sedge is withered from the lake,

And no birds sing.

Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,

So haggard and so woe-begone

The squirrel's granary is full,

And the harvest's done.

I see a lily on thy brow

With anguish moist and fever dew,

And on thy cheek a fading roseFast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads,

Full beautiful, a faery's child:

Her hair was long, her foot was ligh,And her eyes were wild.

I set her on my pacing steed,

And nothing else saw all day long;

For sideways would she lean, and sing

A faery's song.

I made a garland for her head,And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;

She looked at me as she did love,

And made sweet moan.

She found me roots of relish sweet,

And honey wild, and manna dew,

And sure in language strange she said,

"I love thee true!"


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She took me to her elfin grot,

And there she gazed and sighed deep,

And there I shut her wild, sad eyes---

So kissed to sleep.

And there we slumbered on the moss,And there I dreamed, ah! woe betide,

The latest dream I ever dreamedOn the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings, and princes too,

Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;

Who cried---"La belle Dame sans merci

Hath thee in thrall!"

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,

With horrid warning gaped wide,And I awoke and found me here,

On the cold hill side.

And that is why I sojourn here,Alone and palely loitering,

Though the sedge is withered from the lake,

And no birds sing.


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Ode On A Grecian Urn

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,

Thou foster-child of silence and slow timeSylvan historian, who canst thus expres

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhymeWhat leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shap

Of deities or mortals, or of bothIn Tempe or the dales of Arcady

What men or gods are these? What maidens loth

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape

What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unhear

Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play onNot to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd

Pipe to the spirit ditties of no toneFair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leav

Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare

Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss

Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieveShe cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss

For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot sheYour leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu

And, happy melodist, unwearied

For ever piping songs for ever new

More happy love! more happy, happy love

For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd

For ever panting, and for ever young

All breathing human passion far above

That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'dA burning forehead, and a parching tongue

Who are these coming to the sacrificeTo what green altar, O mysterious priest

Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies

And all her silken flanks with garlands drest

What little town by river or sea shore

Or mountain-built with peaceful citadelIs emptied of this folk, this pious morn

And, little town, thy streets for evermor

Will silent be; and not a soul to tel

Why thou art desolate, can e'er return

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with bred

Of marble men and maidens overwrought


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With forest branches and the trodden weed

Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of though

As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral

When old age shall this generation waste

Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woThan ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is alYe know on earth, and all ye need to know.


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Ode To A Nightingale

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drainsOne minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,

But being too happy in thy happiness,---That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,

In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,

Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O for a draught of vintage, that hath beenCooled a long age in the deep-delved earth,

Tasting of Flora and the country green,Dance, and Provencal song, and sun-burnt mirth!O for a beaker full of the warm South,

Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,

With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

And purple-stained mouth;

That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,

And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

What thou among the leaves hast never known,

The weariness, the fever, and the fretHere, where men sit and hear each other groan;

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;

Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

And leaden-eyed despairs;

Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,Or new love pine at them beyond tomorrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,

But on the viewless wings of Poesy,Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:

Already with thee! tender is the night,

And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,Clustered around by all her starry fays;

But here there is no light,

Save what from heaven is with the breezes blownThrough verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.


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I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,

But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet

Wherewith the seasonable month endows

The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;

Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves;And mid-May's eldest child,

The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death,

Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

To take into the air my quiet breath;

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,To cease upon the midnight with no pain,

While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroadIn such an ecstasy!

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain---

To thy high requiem become a sod

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!

No hungry generations tread thee down;

The voice I hear this passing night was heard

In ancient days by emperor and clown:Perhaps the self-same song that found a path

Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,

She stood in tears amid the alien corn;

The same that oft-times hath

Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam

Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bellTo toll me back from thee to my sole self!

Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well

As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades

Past the near meadows, over the still stream,

Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep

In the next valley-glades:

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?Fled is that music:---do I wake or sleep?


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Ode To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cell.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,---

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir, the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.


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When I Have Fears

When I have fears that I may cease to be

Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brainBefore high-piled books, in charactery

Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grainWhen I behold, upon the night's starr'd face

Huge cloudy symbols of a high romanceAnd think that I may never live to trac

Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance

And when I feel, fair creature of an hour

That I shall never look upon thee more

Never have relish in the faery powe

Of unreflecting love;--then on the shor

Of the wide world I stand alone, and thinTill love and fame to nothingness do sink


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Edgar Allan Poe(1809-1849), the son of traveling actors, was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Within

a year, his alcoholic father deserted his mother and three infant children. When his mother died of

tuberculosis in Richmond, Virginia, three-year-old Edgar was adopted by John Allan and his wife.

Allan, a prosperous businessperson, spent time in England, where Poe began his education at private

schools.Back in the United States, Allan forced Poe to leave the University of Virginia in 1826, when Poe

incurred gambling debts he could not pay. He served in the U.S. Army from 1827 to 1829, eventuallyattaining the rank of sergeant-major. Poe next attended West Point, hoping for further military

advancement.Shortly thereafter, Mrs. Allan died of tuberculosis. Poe angrily confronted his foster father about his

extramarital affairs; for this candor he was disowned. Believing that Allan would never reinstate him as

heir, Poe deliberately violated rules to provoke his dismissal from the Academy. In 1835, Poe began his

career as editor, columnist, and reviewer, earning a living he could not make as a writer of stories and

poems. He married his thirteen-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm, in 1836, and lived with her and her

mother during a period marked by illness and poverty. Virginia died of tuberculosis in 1847. Poe died,

delirious, under mysterious circumstances, in 1849.

The Raven

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door-Only this, and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

Eagerly I wished the morrow;- vainly I had sought to borrowFrom my books surcease of sorrow- sorrow for the lost Lenore-

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore-

Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain

Thrilled me- filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;

So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,

"'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door-

Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;-This it is, and nothing more."

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;

But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,

And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,That I scarce was sure I heard you"- here I opened wide the door;-

Darkness there, and nothing more.


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Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering,

fearing,

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;

But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,

And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore!"This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!"-

Merely this, and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.

"Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice:

Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore-

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;-

'Tis the wind and nothing more."

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt andflutter,

In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore;Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed

he;

But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door-

Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door-Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,

By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore."Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no

craven,

Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore-

Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!"

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,

Though its answer little meaning- little relevancy bore;For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being

Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door-

Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,With such name as "Nevermore."

But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only

That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.

Nothing further then he uttered- not a feather then he fluttered-Till I scarcely more than muttered, "other friends have flown

before-

On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before."

Then the bird said, "Nevermore."

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,

"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store,


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Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster

Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore-

Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore

Of 'Never- nevermore'."

But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,

Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust anddoor;

Then upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linkingFancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore-

What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore

Meant in croaking "Nevermore."

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing

To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;

This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease recliningOn the cushion's velvet lining that the lamplight gloated o'er,

But whose velvet violet lining with the lamplight gloating o'er,She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then methought the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer

Swung by Seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor."Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee- by these angels he

hath sent thee

Respite- respite and nepenthe, from thy memories of Lenore!

Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!"Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil!- prophet still, if bird or

devil!-

Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,

Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted-

On this home by horror haunted- tell me truly, I implore-

Is there- is there balm in Gilead?- tell me- tell me, I implore!"Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil- prophet still, if bird ordevil!

By that Heaven that bends above us- by that God we both adore-

Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,

It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore-

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

"Be that word our sign in parting, bird or fiend," I shrieked,

upstarting-

"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!

Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!

Leave my loneliness unbroken!- quit the bust above my door!


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Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my

door!"

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sittingOn the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;

And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the

floor;And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

Shall be lifted- nevermore!


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Lenore

Ah, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever!

Let the bell toll!- a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river;And, Guy de Vere, hast thou no tear?- weep now or nevermore!

See! on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Lenore!Come! let the burial rite be read- the funeral song be sung!-

An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young-A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young.

"Wretches! ye loved her for her wealth and hated her for her pride,

And when she fell in feeble health, ye blessed her- that she died!

How shall the ritual, then, be read?- the requiem how be sung

By you- by yours, the evil eye,- by yours, the slanderous tongue

That did to death the innocence that died, and died so young?"

Peccavimus; but rave not thus! and let a Sabbath songGo up to God so solemnly the dead may feel no wrong.

The sweet Lenore hath "gone before," with Hope, that flew beside,

Leaving thee wild for the dear child that should have been thy

bride.For her, the fair and debonair, that now so lowly lies,

The life upon her yellow hair but not within her eyes

The life still there, upon her hair- the death upon her eyes.

"Avaunt! avaunt! from fiends below, the indignant ghost is riven-

From Hell unto a high estate far up within the Heaven-

From grief and groan, to a golden throne, beside the King of

Heaven!

Let no bell toll, then,- lest her soul, amid its hallowed mirth,

Should catch the note as it doth float up from the damned Earth!

And I!- to-night my heart is light!- no dirge will I upraise,

But waft the angel on her flight with a Paean of old days!"


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Robert Browning(1812-1889). Born in London, Browning attended a private school and was later

tutored at home. After one year as a student of Greek at the University of London, he moved with his

family to Hatcham, where he studied, wrote poetry, and practiced writing for the theater. In 1845, he

began exchanging poems and letters with the already famous poet Elizabeth Barrett; they eloped in

1846. They moved to Italy, where Browning completed most of his work. When Elizabeth died in1861, he returned to England and began to establish his own reputation.

He is noted especially for his fine dramatic monologues in which a wide range of characters reveals thecomplexity of human belief and passion. His many volumes of poetry includeDramatis Personae

(1864) and The Ring and the Book (1868-1869).

My Last Duchess

FERRARA.

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,Looking as if she were alive. I call

That piece a wonder, now: Fr Pandolf's handsWorked busily a day, and there she stands.

Will't please you sit and look at her? I said

``Fr Pandolf'' by design, for never read

Strangers like you that pictured countenance,

The depth and passion of its earnest glance,

But to myself they turned (since none puts byThe curtain I have drawn for you, but I)

And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,

How such a glance came there; so, not the firstAre you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not

Her husband's presence only, called that spot

Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps

Fr Pandolf chanced to say ``Her mantle laps

``Over my lady's wrist too much,'' or ``Paint``Must never hope to reproduce the faint``Half-flush that dies along her throat:'' such stuff

Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough

For calling up that spot of joy. She had

A heart---how shall I say?---too soon made glad,

Too easily impressed; she liked whate'erShe looked on, and her looks went everywhere.

Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast,The dropping of the daylight in the West,

The bough of cherries some officious fool

Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule

She rode with round the terrace---all and each

Would draw from her alike the approving speech,

Or blush, at least. She thanked men,---good! but thanked

Somehow---I know not how---as if she ranked

My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name


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With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame

This sort of trifling? Even had you skill

In speech---(which I have not)---to make your will

Quite clear to such an one, and say, ``Just this

``Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,``Or there exceed the mark''---and if she let

Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly setHer wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,

---E'en then would be some stooping; and I chooseNever to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,

Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without

Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;

Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands

As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet

The company below, then. I repeat,

The Count your master's known munificenceIs ample warrant that no just pretence

Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed

At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go

Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,

Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!


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Through The Metidja To Abd-El-Kadr[Abd-el-Kadr was an Arab Chief of Algiers who resisted the French in 1833.]

I.As I ride, as I ride,

With a full heart for my guide,

So its tide rocks my side,

As I ride, as I ride,That, as I were double-eyed,

He, in whom our Tribes confide,

Is descried, ways untried

As I ride, as I ride.

II.As I ride, as I ride

To our Chief and his Allied,Who dares chide my heart's prideAs I ride, as I ride?

Or are witnesses denied---

Through the desert waste and wide

Do I glide unespied

As I ride, as I ride?

III.As I ride, as I ride,

When an inner voice has cried,

The sands slide, nor abide(As I ride, as I ride)

O'er each visioned homicide

That came vaunting (has he lied?)

To reside---where he died,

As I ride, as I ride.

IV.As I ride, as I ride,Ne'er has spur my swift horse plied,

Yet his hide, streaked and pied,

As I ride, as I ride,

Shows where sweat has sprung and dried,---Zebra-footed, ostrich-thighed---

How has vied stride with strideAs I ride, as I ride!

V.As I ride, as I ride,

Could I loose what Fate has tied,

Ere I pried, she should hide

(As I ride, as I ride)

All that's meant me---satisfiedWhen the Prophet and the Bride


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Stop veins I'd have subside

As I ride, as I ride!


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Walt Whitman(1819-1892). One of nine children, Whitman was born in Huntington, Long Island,

and grew up in Brooklyn, where his father worked as a carpenter. At age eleven, after five years of

public school, Whitman took a job as a printer's assistant. He learned the printing trade and, before his

twentieth birthday, became editor of theLong Islander, a Huntington newspaper. He edited several

newspapers in the New York area and one in New Orleans before leaving the newspaper business in1848. He then lived with his parents, worked as a part-time carpenter, and began writingLeaves of

Grass, which he first published at his own expense in 1855.After the Civil War (during which he was a devoted volunteer, ministering to the wounded), Whitman

was fired from his job in the Department of the Interior by Secretary James Harlan, who consideredLeaves of Grassobscene. Soon, however, he was rehired in the attorney general's office, where he

remained until 1874.

In 1881, after many editions,Leaves of Grassfinally found a publisher willing to print it uncensored.

Translations were enthusiastically received in Europe, but Whitman remained relatively unappreciated

in America, where it was only after his death that a large audience would come to admire his original

and innovative expression of American individualism.

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[Poetry] Poetry Text Book