Victorian Poetry: An Anthology

Readings highlighted in grey will be included on the anthology’s companion website.

Preface

Introduction

Thomas Hood (1799–1845)

• The Song of the Shirt
• The Workhouse Clock: An Allegory
• The Bridge of Sighs

John Henry Newman (1801–1890)

• The Brand of Cain
• Penance
• The Pillar of the Cloud
• Memory
• Hope
• Flowers Without Fruit
• The Pilgrim Queen
• from The Dream of Gerontius

William Barnes (1801–1886)

• The Gre’t Woak Tree
• The Common a-Took In
• My Orcha’d in Linden Lea
• The Wife A-Lost
• Tokens
• The Turnstile
• Woak Hill
• The Wind at the Door

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838)

• Sappho’s Song
• Lines of Life
• Revenge
• The Factory
• Stanzas on the Death of Mrs. Hemans
• The Unknown Grave
• Felicia Hemans
• Night at Sea

Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803–1849)

• Song
• Dirge
• To Tartar, a Terrier Beauty
• The Phantom-Wooer
• Dream-Pedlary
• To Night
• Resurrection Song

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)

• Felicia Hemans
• The Young Queen
• L.E.L.’s Last Question
• The Cry of the Children
• To George Sand: A Desire
• To George Sand: A Recognition
• Grief
• The Romaunt of the Page
• Lady Geraldine’s Courtship
• A Woman’s Shortcomings
• A Man’s Requirements
• The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point
• A Year’s Spinning
• Sonnets from the Portuguese
• Flush or Faunus
• Hiram Powers’ “Greek Slave”
• A Curse for a Nation
• from Aurora Leigh: Book 1; from Book 2; from Book 5
• A Musical Instrument
• Mother and Poet
• Lord Walter’s Wife
• My Heart and I

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)

• Thoughts on Poetry and Its Varieties

Caroline Norton (1808–1877)

• Crippled Jane
• A Voice from the Factories
• The Mother’s Last Watch
• The Picture of Sappho
• The Poet’s Choice

Edward FitzGerald (1809–1883)

• Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)

• The Kraken
• Mariana
• Song [A spirit haunts the year’s last hours]
• The Dying Swan
• To ——, with the Following Poem
• The Palace of Art
• Oenone
• Fatima
• The Lady of Shalott
• The Hesperides
• The Lotos-Eaters
• Semele
• Ulysses
• The Epic
• Morte d’Arthur
• [Break, break, break]
• St Simeon Stylites
• The Two Voices
• Locksley Hall
• from The Princess
  • As through the Land
  • Sweet and Low
  • The Splendour Falls
  • Home They Brought Her Warrior Dead
  • Ask Me No More
  • Tears, Idle Tears
  • Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal
  • Come Down, O Maid
  • [The Woman’s Cause is Man’s]
• In Memoriam
• The Eagle
• The Charge of the Light Brigade
• Maud
• Tithonus
• [Flower in the Crannied Wall]
• from Idylls of the King
  • The Holy Grail
• To E. FitzGerald
• Tiresias
• Vastness
• To the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava
• Far—Far—Away
• Crossing the Bar

Arthur Henry Hallam (1811–1833)

• To A.T.
• [How is’t for every glance of thine I find]
• [Still here—thou has not faded from my sight]
• Lines spoken in the character of Pygmalion
• On Some of the Characteristics of Modern Poetry, and on the Lyrical Poems of Alfred Tennyson

Robert Browning (1812–1889)

• Johannes Agricola in Meditation
• Porphyria’s Lover
• My Last Duchess
• Count Gismond
• Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister
• Cristina
• The Laboratory
• “How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix”
• Pictor Ignotus
• The Lost Leader
• Home-Thoughts, from Abroad
• The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church
• Meeting at Night
• Parting at Morning
• Essay on Shelley
• Love Among the Ruins
• A Woman’s Last Word
• Fra Lippo Lippi
• A Toccata of Galuppi’s
• “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”
• The Statue and the Bust
• Love in a Life
• How It Strikes a Contemporary
• The Last Ride Together
• Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha
• Bishop Blougram’s Apology
• Memorabilia
• Andrea del Sarto
• In a Year
• Cleon
• Two in the Campagna
• A Grammarian’s Funeral
• One Word More
• Dîs Aliter Visum; or, le Byron de Nos Jours
• Abt Vogler
• Rabbi Ben Ezra
• Caliban upon Setebos
• May and Death
• Prospice
• from The Ring and the Book
• Amphibian
• The Householder
• House
• Now
• Epilogue

Edward Lear (1812–1888)

• Selected Limericks
• The Owl and the Pussy-cat
• The Jumblies
• Calico Pie
• The Dong with a Luminous Nose
• The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò
• The Pobble Who Has No Toes
• How Pleasant to Know Mr. Lear!

Grace Aguilar (1816–1847)

• Past, Present, and Future: A Sketch
• The Hebrew’s Appeal
• Song of the Spanish Jews
• The Wanderers

Emily Brontë (1818–1848)

• [High waving heather ’neath stormy blasts bending]
• [I’ll come when thou art saddest]
• [Loud without the wind was roaring]
• [A little while, a little while]
• The Old Stoic
• [Shall Earth no more inspire thee]
• My Comforter
• To Imagination
• Plead for Me
• Remembrance
• Stars
• [No coward soul is mine]
• [I’m happiest when most away]
• [If grief for grief can touch thee]
• [Often rebuked, yet always back returning]

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861)

• [Duty—that’s to say complying]
• Epi-Strauss-ium
• Easter Day
• Easter Day II
• Qui Laborat, Orat
• [Is it true, ye gods, who treat us]
• Say Not the Struggle Nought Availeth
• Hymnos Ahymnos
• Seven Sonnets on the Thought of Death
• Jacob
• In the Great Metropolis
• [To spend uncounted years of pain]
• Recent English Poetry
• from Amours de Voyage
• The Latest Decalogue
• [“There is no God,” the wicked saith]
• from Dipsychus
• [That there are powers above us I admit]

George Eliot (1819–1880)

• Two Lovers
• O, May I Join the Choir Invisible
• Brother and Sister

Dora Greenwell (1821–1882)

• The Railway Station
• A Comparison
• Rest
• A Song to Call to Remembrance: A Plea for the Coventry Ribbon-Weavers
• A Scherzo: A Shy Person’s Wishes
• Redemption (“I am not skilled to understand”)
• Lilies

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)

• The Forsaken Merman
• Quiet Work
• Shakespeare
• To a Gipsy Child by the Seashore
• Resignation
• Memorial Verses
• The Buried Life
• Switzerland
  • 1. Meeting
  • 2. Parting
  • 3. A Farewell
  • 4. Isolation. To Marguerite
  • 5. To Marguerite – Continued
  • 6. Absence
  • 7. The Terrace at Berne
• The Scholar-Gipsy
• Philomela
• Preface to Poems (1853)
• Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse
• from “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time”
• Thyrsis
• Dover Beach
• East London
• West London
• Rugby Chapel
• Immortality
• Palladium
• Growing Old

Coventry Patmore (1823–1896)

• from The Angel in the House
  • The Prologue
  • The Paragon
  • The Revelation
  • The Wife’s Tragedy
  • The Foreign Land
• The Azalea
• Departure
• The Toys
• A Farewell
• To the Unknown Eros
• To the Body

William McGonagall (1825–1902)

• The Tay Bridge Disaster
• Death and Burial of Lord Tennyson

Adelaide Anne Procter (1825–1864)

• A Legend of Bregenz
• The Cradle-Song of the Poor
• The Lesson of the War
• Thankfulness
• A Woman’s Question
• A Lost Chord
• Two Worlds
• A Woman’s Answer
• A Woman’s Last Word
• An Appeal
• The Jubilee of 1850
• A Desire
• The Church in 1849
• The Homeless Poor

Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)

• Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning; or, Pure, Ornate, and Grotesque Art in English Poetry

George Meredith (1828–1909)

• Modern Love
• Ode to the Spirit of Earth in Autumn
• The Lark Ascending
• Lucifer in Starlight

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882)

• The Blessed Damozel
• My Sister’s Sleep
• Sister Helen
• The Burden of Nineveh
• Sibylla Palmifera
• Lady Lilith
• Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee
• Jenny
• The House of Life (1870 edition)
  • Sonnets
  • Songs
    • 1. Love-Lily
    • 2. First Love Remembered
    • 3. Plighted Promise
    • 4. Sudden Light
    • 5. A Little While
    • 6. The Song of the Bower
    • 7. Penumbra
    • 8. The Woodspurge
    • 9. The Honeysuckle
    • 10. A Young Fir-Wood
    • 11. The Sea-Limits
  • Silent Noon
• The Stealthy School of Criticism
• [A Sonnet is a moment’s monument]
• Found
• The Orchard Pit

Elizabeth Siddal (1829–1862)

• A Year and a Day
• Shepherd Turned Sailor
• The Lust of the Eyes
• Worn Out
• At Last
• Love and Hate
• The Passing of Love
• Lord, May I Come?

Christina Rossetti (1830–1894)

• Goblin Market
• Dream-Land
• At Home
• A Triad
• Cousin Kate
• Spring
• A Birthday
• Remember
• After Death
• An End
• My Dream
• An Apple-Gathering
• Echo
• Winter: My Secret
• “No, Thank You, John”
• May
• A Pause of Thought
• Song [She sat and sang alway]
• Song [When I am dead, my dearest]
• Dead before Death
• Rest
• The Convent Threshold
• Up-Hill
• “A Bruised Reed Shall He Not Break”
• A Better Resurrection
• The Prince’s Progress
• Twice
• What Would I Give?
• Memory
• L.E.L.
• Life and Death
• The Lowest Place
• A Christmas Carol
• Monna Innominata
• Birchington Church-Yard
• Have I Not Striven, My God?
• “Endure Hardness”
• An Echo from Willow-Wood
• [I wish I were a little bird]
• Cobwebs
• In an Artist’s Studio
• Introspective
• “The Heart Knoweth Its Own Bitterness”
• Promises like Pie-Crust
• In Progress
• Sleeping at Last

Joseph Skipsey (1832–1903)

• The Hartley Calamity
• The Stars are Twinkling
• Get Up!
• The Dewdrop

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898)

• [How doth the little crocodile]
• [You are old, Father William]
• Poeta Fit, Non Nascitur
• Jabberwocky
• The Walrus and the Carpenter
• [In winter, when the fields are white]
• The White Knight’s Song
• [A boat, beneath a sunny sky]

William Morris (1834–1896)

• Riding Together
• Summer Dawn
• The Defence of Guenevere
• The Eve of Crécy
• The Sailing of the Sword
• The Blue Closet
• The Tune of Seven Towers
• The Haystack in the Floods
• Two Red Roses Across the Moon
• In Prison
• Masters in this Hall
• from The Earthly Paradise: An Apology
• Chants for Socialists, No. 1: The Day is Coming
• Thunder in the Garden
• from Hopes and Fears for Art

James Thomson (1834–1882)

• The City of Dreadful Night

W.S. Gilbert (1836–1911)

• When I was a Lad
• I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General
• If You’re Anxious for to Shine
• A Lady Fair, of Lineage High
• I’ve Got a Little List
• The Sun Whose Rays are All Ablaze

Augusta Webster (1837–1894)

• By the Looking-Glass
• Circe
• The Happiest Girl in the World
• A Castaway
• Coming Home
• An Inventor
• Poets and Personal Pronouns
• Mother and Daughter

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909)

• The Sundew
• Choruses from Atalanta in Calydon
  • 1. [When the hounds of spring]
  • 2. [Before the beginning of years]
• A Ballad of Life
• A Ballad of Death
• Laus Veneris
• The Triumph of Time
• Les Noyades
• A Leave-Taking
• Itylus
• Anactoria
• Hymn to Proserpine
• Hermaphroditus
• Rondel
• A Match
• Faustine
• The Leper
• Dolores
• The Garden of Proserpine
• from Notes on Poems and Reviews
• from William Blake: A Critical Essay
• Ave atque Vale
• A Forsaken Garden
• A Ballad of Dreamland
• Hertha
• A Nympholept
• The Lake of Gaube

Walter Pater (1839–1894)

• from The Renaissance
  • Preface
  • from Chapter 6: Leonardo da Vinci
  • Conclusion

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)

• Hap
• Neutral Tones
• Ditty
• In a Wood
• The Temporary the All
• Friends Beyond
• In a Eweleaze near Weatherbury
• Drummer Hodge
• The Darkling Thrush
• The Ruined Maid
• The Self-Unseeing
• An August Midnight
• God-Forgotten
• In Tenebris I
• In Tenebris II
• In Tenebris III
• A Broken Appointment
• The Man He Killed
• A Trampwoman’s Tragedy
• The Minute Before Meeting
• Night in the Old Home
• The Convergence of the Twain
• Under the Waterfall
• Poems of 1912–13
  • The Going
  • Your Last Drive
  • The Walk
  • Rain on a Grave
  • I Found Her Out There
  • Without Ceremony
  • Lament
  • The Haunter
  • The Voice
  • His Visitor
  • A Circula
  • A Dream or No
  • After a Journey
  • A Death-Day Recalled
  • Beeny Cliff
  • At Castle Boterel
  • Places
  • The Phantom Horsewoman
  • The Spell of the Rose
  • St. Launce’s Revisited
  • Where the Picnic Was
• Channel Firing
• In Time of “The Breaking of Nations”
• The Oxen
• Overlooking the River Stour
• The Shadow on the Stone
• During Wind and Rain
• Afterwards
• Nobody Comes
• Proud Songsters
• Apology

John Addington Symonds (1840–1893)

• from Sonnets of Michelangelo
  • 30: Love the Light-Giver
  • 31: Love’s Lordship
• Vintage
• From Friend to Friend
• Personality
• The Passing Stranger
• The Innovators
• Chimaera

Mathilde Blind (1841–1896)

• Entangled
• from The Ascent of Man
• [Winding all my life about thee]
• On a Forsaken Lark’s Nest
• Reapers
• The Songs of Summer
• The Red Sunsets, 1883
• The Russian Student’s Tale
• A Mother’s Dream
• Manchester by Night
• Rest

Robert Buchanan (1841–1901)

• The Fleshly School of Poetry

Andrew Lang (1844–1912)

• The Shade of Helen
• Two Sonnets of the Sirens
• Ballade of Blue China
• Ballade of His Choice of a Sepulchre

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)

• Author’s Preface
• The Habit of Perfection
• The Wreck of the Deutschland
• God’s Grandeur
• The Starlight Night
• Spring
• The Sea and the Skylark
• The Windhover
• Pied Beauty
• Hurrahing in Harvest
• The Caged Skylark
• Binsey Poplars
• The Candle Indoors
• Felix Randal
• Spring and Fall
• Spelt from Sibyl’s Leaves
• Inversnaid
• [As kingfishers catch fire]
• Carrion Comfort
• [No worst, there is none]
• Harry Ploughman
• [To seem the stranger lies my lot]
• [I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day]
• [My own heart let me more have pity on]
• That Nature Is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection
• [Thou art indeed just, Lord]
• To R. B.
• Moonrise

Robert Bridges (1844–1930)

• London Snow
• On a Dead Child
• [They that in play can do the thing they would]
• [The evening darkens over]
• The Affliction of Richard
• [The north wind came up yesternight]
• Poor Poll
• Cheddar Pinks
• Low Barometer
• The Sleeping Mansion

“Michael Field” (Katharine Bradley [1846–1914] and Edith Cooper [1862–1913])

• [Dreamless from happy sleep I woke]
• [Atthis, my darling, thou did’st stray]
• [Maids, not to you my mind doth change]
• [Climbing the hill a coil of snakes]
• La Gioconda
• The Birth of Venus
• The Sleeping Venus
• [A girl]
• [It was deep April, and the morn]
• [Mortal, if thou art beloved]
• [Sometimes I do despatch my heart]
• [She mingled me rue and roses]
• The Grand Mogul
• [Our myrtle is in flower]
• Cyclamens
• Unbosoming
• [When I grow old]
• Power in Silence
• Nests in Elms
• Eros
• From Baudelaire
• The Poet
• The Mummy Invokes His Soul
• Old Ivories
• Ebbtide at Sundown
• Where the Blessed Feet Have Trod
• Trinity

Alice Meynell (1847–1922)

• A Letter from a Girl to Her Own Old Age
• To One Poem in a Silent Time
• Renouncement
• The Rhythm of Life
• Cradle-Song at Twilight
• The Shepherdess
• Parentage

William Ernest Henley (1849–1903)

• Invictus
• In Hospital

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)

• [I saw red evening through the rain]
• from A Children’s Garden of Verses (1885)
  • Bed in Summer
  • Whole Duty of Children
  • Looking Forward
  • The Land of Counterpane
  • The Land of Nod
  • Good and Bad Children
• Requiem
• [I have trod the upward and the downward slope]

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)

• Hélas!
• Requiescat
• E Tenebris
• To Milton
• Impression du Matin
• Le Jardin
• The Harlot’s House
• Symphony in Yellow
• from “The Decay of Lying”
• from “The Critic as Artist”
• Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray
• The Disciple
• The Artist
• The Sphinx
• The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Toru Dutt (1856–1877)

• À mon Père
• Savitri
• Sîta
• Near Hastings
• Baugmaree
• The Lotus
• Our Casuarina Tree

John Davidson (1857–1909)

• Thirty Bob a Week
• Song of a Train
• A Northern Suburb
• Waiting
• from The Testament of an Empire Builder

A. Mary F. Robinson (1857–1944)

• A Dialogue
• [God sent a poet to reform His earth]
• Song [Oh for the wings of a dove]
• The Scape-Goat
• Men and Monkeys
• A Ballad of Forgotten Tunes
• Neurasthenia
• The Frozen River
• The Present Age
• Tree-Talk
• Inter Pares

Constance Naden (1858–1889)

• The Lady Doctor
• The Sister of Mercy
• Love Versus Learning
• Illusions
• Scientific Wooing
• The New Orthodoxy
• Natural Selection
• Solomon Redivivus, 1886
• Christ, the Nazarene

Dollie Radford (1858–1920)

• Song [I am wanting to send you a song, love]
• Song [Why seems the world so fair?]
• [I could not through the burning day]
• [If my poor words were colours]
• [Ah, Love, through what unfathomed deeps]
• To My Children
• A Novice
• From Our Emancipated Aunt in Town

A.E. Housman (1859–1936)

• 1887
• [Loveliest of trees, the cherry now]
• [On moonlit heath and lonesome bank]
• [When I watch the living meet]
• [When I was one-and-twenty]
• [Look not in my eyes, for fear]
• [Oh, when I was in love with you]
• To an Athlete Dying Young
• [The street sounds to the soldiers’ tread]
• [This time of year a twelvemonth past]
• [Is my team ploughing]
• [Others, I am not the first]
• [On Wenlock Edge the wood’s in trouble]
• [From far, from eve and morning]
• [Into my heart an air that kills]
• The Immortal Part
• [Shot? so quick, so clean an ending?]
• [With rue my heart is laden]
• [Terence, this is stupid stuff]
• [I hoed and trenched and weeded]
• The Parallelogram; or, Infant Optimism
• [In the morning, in the morning]
• The Oracles
• Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries
• [Because I liked you better]
• [Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists?]
• The African Lion

Francis Thompson (1859–1907)

• The Hound of Heaven

Rosamund Marriott Watson (Graham R. Tomson) (1860–1911)

• Ballad of the Bird-Bride
• Fulfilment
• Hereafter
• A Silhouette
• In a London Garden
• Chimaera
• Of the Earth, Earthy
• In the Rain
• After Sunset
• To My Cat
• A Ballad of the Were-Wolf
• Vespertilia

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941)

• The Sunset of the Century

Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (1861–1907)

• The Other Side of a Mirror
• “Over the Hills and Far Away”
• L’Oiseau Bleu
• The Lady of Trees
• The Witch
• In London Town
• Words

Tekahionwake / E. Pauline Johnson (1861–1913)

• A Cry from an Indian Wife
• The Happy Hunting Grounds
• The Song My Paddle Sings
• Kicking-Horse River
• The Cattle Thief
• Ojistoh
• from His Sister’s Son
• The Corn Husker
• The Art of Alma-Tadema
• The Lost Lagoon

May Kendall (1861–1943)

• Lay of the Trilobite
• The Conscientious Ghost
• “Taking Long Views”
• Woman’s Future
• The Mermaid’s Chapel
• Heraclitus in Church
• To the Next Meeting
• The Sandblast Girl and the Acid Man
• Love and Matter
• Fairies and the Philologist
• In the Toy Shop
• Journeying

Amy Levy (1861–1889)

• Xantippe
• Felo de Se
• Magdalen
• To Lallie
• A London Plane-Tree
• London in July
• A March Day in London
• Ballade of an Omnibus
• Ballade of a Special Edition
• Straw in the Street
• London Poets
• Borderland
• The Old House
• The Last Judgment
• Cambridge in the Long
• To Vernon Lee
• The End of the Day
• At a Dinner Party

Sir Henry Newbolt (1862–1938)

• Vitaï Lampada
• He Fell Among Thieves

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936)

• Danny Deever
• Tommy
• Gunga Din
• The Widow at Windsor
• Mandalay
• Recessional
• The White Man’s Burden
• Boots
• If—

William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

• Ephemera
• Down by the Salley Gardens
• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
• Who Goes with Fergus?
• The Lover Tells of the Rose in His Heart
• Into the Twilight
• [The wind blows out of the gates of the day]
• The Cap and Bells
• The Secret Rose
• The Travail of Passion
• He Remembers Forgotten Beauty
• The Song of Wandering Aengus
• He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
• Adam’s Curse

Arthur Symons (1865–1945)

• Pastel
• Maquillage
• In Bohemia
• The Absinthe Drinker
• Javanese Dancers
• The Decadent Movement in Literature
• Nora on the Pavement
• Prologue
• On the Stage
• La Mélinite: Moulin Rouge
• Stella Maris
• Mauve, Black, and Rose
• White Heliotrope
• To One in Alienation
• Impression

Ernest Dowson (1867–1900)

• Nuns of the Perpetual Adoration
• Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae
• To One in Bedlam
• Extreme Unction
• Spleen
• Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam
• Villanelle of the Poet’s Road

Lionel Johnson (1867–1902)

• Plato in London
• By the Statue of King Charles at Charing Cross
• The Dark Angel
• The Precept of Silence
• Bagley Wood
• The Church of a Dream
• The Destroyer of a Soul
• The Darkness
• The Sleep of Will

Charlotte Mew (1869–1928)

• V. R. I.
• The Farmer’s Bride
• Madeleine in Church
• The Road to Kérity

Lord Alfred Douglas (1870–1945)

• In Praise of Shame
• The Two Loves
• The Dead Poet

Sarojini Naidu (1879–1949)

• Indian Dancers
• Palanquin-Bearers
• Indian Weavers
• Village-Song
• In Praise of Henna
• Cradle-Song
• Nightfall in the City of Hyderabad
• Street Cries
• To India

Glossary
Credits
Index of Authors, Titles, and First Lines

Online Appendices

• Appendix A: Poets of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales
• Appendix B: Victorians on Victorians
• Appendix C: Poetry for Children
• Appendix D: The Spasmodic Poets