Contents
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Introduction
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Prologue
Introduction to Songs of Experience — William Blake
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Phase I: The Quickening
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1. Awakening: “After Dark Vapours Have Oppressed our Plains”
To Morning — William Blake
Westminster Bridge — William Wordsworth
Up! quit thy bower — Joanna Baillie
Sonnet: After Dark Vapours Have Oppressed Our Plains — John Keats
Home-Thoughts, from Abroad — Robert Browning
Spring — Gerard Manley Hopkins
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2. Childhood and innocence: “Laughing is heard on the hill”
Nurse’s Song — William Blake
Infant Joy — William Blake
It Is a Beauteous Evening — William Wordsworth
Evening Schoolboys — John Clare
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3. Wonders and discoveries: “Come forth into the light of things”
The Tables Turned — William Wordsworth
On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer — John Keats
A Boy’s Song — James Hogg
Memorabilia — Robert Browning
London Snow — Robert Bridges
I Love All Beauteous Things — Robert Bridges
At Night — Alice Meynell
After the Visit — Thomas Hardy
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6. Resonance: “I hear lake water lapping”
The Eolian Harp — Samuel Taylor Coleridge
There Was a Boy — William Wordsworth
My Heart Leaps Up — William Wordsworth
The Solitary Reaper — William Wordsworth
I’m Happiest When Most Away — Emily Brontë
Stanzas: ‘Often rebuked, yet always back returning’ — Emily Brontë
Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal — Alfred, Lord Tennyson
In the Valley of Cauteretz — Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The Lake Isle of Innisfree — William Butler Yeats
In Time of “The Breaking of Nations” — Thomas Hardy
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7. The journey out: “The wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking”
Parting at Morning — Robert Browning
A Wet Sheet and a Flowing Sea — Allan Cunningham
The Vagabond — Robert Louis Stevenson
Sea Fever — John Masefield
When I Set Out for Lyonnesse — Thomas Hardy
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8. Passion, desire, despair: “A sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice”
Kubla Khan — Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known — William Wordsworth
A Dirge — Percy Bysshe Shelley
To Constantia, Singing — Percy Bysshe Shelley
The Faithless Knight — Caroline Norton
Rondeau (‘Jenny Kissed Me’) — Leigh Hunt
Courage — Matthew Arnold
Song — George Darley
Elaine’s Song — Alfred, Lord Tennyson
No Second Troy — William Butler Yeats
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Phase II: The Surge
4. Youth eternal: “Thou wast not born for death”
Are not the joys — William Blake
The Fly — William Blake
Lochinvar — Sir Walter Scott
Ode to a Nightingale — John Keats
Echoes — Thomas Moore
Stanzas Written on the Road Between Florence and Pisa — George
Gordon, Lord Byron
Ballad: Time of Roses — Thomas Hood
No Coward Soul Is Mine — Emily Brontë
God’s Grandeur — Gerard Manley Hopkins
The Rose of the World — William Butler Yeats
5. Love and beauty: “She walks in beauty, like the night”
A Red, Red Rose — Robert Burns
She Walks in Beauty — George Gordon, Lord Byron
Stanzas for Music — George Gordon, Lord Byron
Bright Star — John Keats
Love’s Philosophy — Percy Bysshe Shelley
Song — Thomas Lovell Beddoes
The Lost Mistress — Robert Browning
Meeting at Night — Robert Browning
A Birthday — Christina Georgina Rossetti
Love Lives Beyond the Tomb — John Clare
Pied Beauty — Gerard Manley Hopkins
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9. Forces of nature: “I Am the Daughter of Earth and Water”
The Tyger — William Blake
The Cloud — Percy Bysshe Shelley
The Kraken — Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The Eagle — Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The Windhover — Gerard Manley Hopkins
10. Revolution, violence, war: “And who shall bid us nay?”
Day — William Blake
The Rights of Woman — Anna Letitia Barbauld
Jerusalem (‘And did those feet in ancient time’) — William Blake
England in 1819 — Percy Bysshe Shelley
When a Man Hath No Freedom to Fight for at Home — George
Gordon, Lord Byron
The Song of the Western Men — Robert Stephen Hawker
The War-song of Dinas Vawr — Thomas Love Peacock
The People’s Anthem (‘When wilt thou save the people?’) —
Ebenezer Elliott
The Charge of the Light Brigade — Alfred, Lord Tennyson
A Death Song — William Morris
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12. Lost love: “Let us go hence my songs; she will not hear”
She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways — William Wordsworth
Three Years She Grew — William Wordsworth
Rose Aylmer — Walter Savage Landor
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13. Lost response: “The white cup shrivels round the golden heart”
The Old Familiar Faces — Charles Lamb
Coronach — Walter Scott
To Marguerite: Continued — Matthew Arnold
Dover Beach — Matthew Arnold
Two In the Campagna — Robert Browning
Young and Old — Charles Kingsley
Barren Spring — Dante Gabriel Rossetti
The Thread of Life — Christina Georgina Rossetti
The Listeners — Walter de la Mare
As the Team’s Head Brass — Edward Thomas
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14. Lost innocence: “Tomb-stones where flowers should be”
The Garden of Love — William Blake
A Poison Tree — William Blake
The Sick Rose — William Blake
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Phase III: Bereavement
11. Fall: “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”
To Autumn — John Keats
Ode: Autumn — Thomas Hood
The Mermaidens’ Vesper Hymn — George Darley
Autumn Idleness — Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Binsey Poplars — Gerard Manley Hopkins
I Dug, Beneath the Cypress Shade — Thomas Love Peacock
Surprised by Joy — William Wordsworth
So We’ll Go No More a Roving — George Gordon, Lord Byron
Archy’s Song (from Charles I —‘A Widow Bird Sate Mourning’) — Percy Bysshe Shelley
Mariana — Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Mary: It Is the Evening Hour — John Clare
Remembrance — Emily Brontë
A Year’s Spinning — Elizabeth Barrett Browning
A Leave-Taking — Algernon Charles Swinburne
Neutral Tones — Thomas Hardy
A Garden by the Sea — William Morris
A Farewell — Coventry Patmore
The Garden of Shadow — Ernest Christopher Dowson
Bredon Hill — A.E. Housman
The Voice — Thomas Hardy
After a Journey — Thomas Hardy
When We Two Parted — George Gordon, Lord Byron
An Apple-Gathering — Christina Georgina Rossetti
From Modern Love (50) — George Meredith
The Toys — Coventry Patmore
Spring and Fall — Gerard Manley Hopkins
Hélas — Oscar Wilde
15. Disenchantment: “They lie with bitter apples in their hands”
Harp of the North, Farewell! — Walter Scott
Stanzas Written in Dejection-December 1818, Near Naples —
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Ode on Melancholy — John Keats
The Flower That Smiles Today — Percy Bysshe Shelley
Lift Not the Painted Veil — Percy Bysshe Shelley
Break, Break, Break — Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The Nameless One — James Clarence Mangan
The Woodspurge — Dante Gabriel Rossetti
The Orchard-Pit — Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Into My Heart an Air That Kills — A.E. Housman
The Way Through the Woods — Rudyard Kipling
16. Approaching darkness: “If winter comes, can spring be far behind?”
Languid, and Sad, and Slow — William Lisle Bowles
Ode to the West Wind — Percy Bysshe Shelley
If Thou Wilt Ease Thine Heart — Thomas Lovell Beddoes
The Meadows in Spring — Edward FitzGerald
Ulysses — Alfred, Lord Tennyson
In Tenebris — Thomas Hardy
The Call — Charlotte Mew
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Phase IV: The Starlit Night
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17. Night come: “This fragile frame at eve”
To Night — Charlotte Smith
Frost at Midnight — Samuel Taylor Coleridge
To the Moon — Percy Bysshe Shelley
Silence — Thomas Hood
To Night — Joseph Blanco White
I Look Into My Glass — Thomas Hardy
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18. Time and the past: “The same winds sang and the same waves whitened”
Dover Cliffs — William Lisle Bowles
My Days Among the Dead Are Past — By Robert Southey
Ode on a Grecian Urn— John Keats
I Remember, I Remember — Thomas Hood
Tears, Idle Tears — Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Sudden Light — Dante Gabriel Rossetti
As Slow Our Ship — Thomas Moore
A Forsaken Garden — Algernon Charles Swinburne
At Castle Boterel — Thomas Hardy
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19. Man ephemeral: “And we drop like the fruits of a tree”
The Destruction of Sennacherib — George Gordon, Lord Byron
Ozymandias — Percy Bysshe Shelley
The Leveller — Bryan Waller Procter (Barry Cornwall)
The Splendor Falls — Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The Bourne — Christina Georgina Rossetti
Dirge in Woods — George Meredith
They Are Not Long — Ernest Dowson
Cities and Thrones and Powers — Rudyard Kipling
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20. Death and posterity: “And if thou wilt, remember”
To—(‘Music, when soft voices die’) — Percy Bysshe Shelley
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Stanzas — Emily Brontë
Song — Christina Georgina Rossetti
Remember — Christina Georgina Rossetti
After Death — Christina Georgina Rossetti
The Soldier — Rupert Brooke
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21. Death, resignation, relief: “Twilight and evening bell”
Sonnet To Sleep — John Keats
The Sleep — Elizabeth Barrett Browning
A Death-scene — Emily Brontë
Stars — Emily Brontë
I Am! — John Clare
On His Seventy-Fifth Birthday — Walter Savage Landor
Crossing the Bar — Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The Whaups — Robert Louis Stevenson
Sleeping at Last — Christina Georgina Rossetti
Lights Out — Edward Thomas
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22. Death, anxiety, fear: “Unwilling, alone we embark”
When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be — John Keats
La Belle Dame Sans Merci: A Ballad — John Keats
The Inchcape Rock — Robert Southey
Summer and Winter — Percy Bysshe Shelley
The Sands of Dee — Charles Kingsley
The Sleeping House — Alfred, Lord Tennyson
E Tenebris — Oscar Wilde
No Worst, There Is None — Gerard Manley Hopkins
I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, Not Day — Gerard Manley
Hopkins
On a Dead Child — Robert Bridges
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23. Visions of death and transcendence: “It is a land with neither night nor day”
Darkness — George Gordon, Lord Byron
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To Jane (‘The keen stars were twinkling’) — Percy Bysshe Shelley 230
Past Ruined Ilion — Walter Savage Landor
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Cobwebs — Christina Georgina Rossetti
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Prospice — Robert Browning
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Invictus — William Ernest Henley
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Coda: Final Words
The Human Abstract — William Blake
Mutability — Percy Bysshe Shelley
Abou Ben Adhem — Leigh Hunt
Say Not the Struggle Nought Availeth — Arthur Hugh Clough
Dream-Pedlary — Thomas Lovell Beddoes
Up-Hill — Christina Georgina Rossetti
Palladium — Matthew Arnold
If — Rudyard Kipling
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Epilogue
Well I Remember — Walter Savage Landor
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A Note On The Poems
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List Of Poets And Poems
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Editorial Board
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