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Queen Summeror the Tourneyof the Lily & the Rosepenned & portrayedby Walter Crane When Summer on the earth was queenShe held her court in gardens greenFair hung with tapestry of leaves,Where threads of gold the sun enweavesWith checquered patterns on the floorOf velvet lawns the scythe smoothes o’er:Their waving fans the soft winds spreadEach way to cool Queen Summer’s head:The woodland... more...

There was an Old Man with a nose,Who said, "If you choose to supposeThat my nose is too long, you are certainly wrong!"That remarkable Man with a nose. There was a Young Person of Smyrna,Whose Grandmother threatened to burn her;But she seized on the Cat, and said, "Granny, burn that!You incongruous Old Woman of Smyrna!" There was an Old Man on a hill,Who seldom, if ever, stood still;He... more...

INTRODUCTION In an address to the American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies at the 1983 annual meeting, Roger Lonsdale suggested that our knowledge of eighteenth-century poetry has depended heavily on what our anthologies have decided to print. For the most part modern anthologies have, in turn, drawn on collections put together at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the next,... more...

PART I. The Arrow and the Song. "The Arrow and the Song," by Longfellow (1807-82), is placed first in this volume out of respect to a little girl of six years who used to love to recite it to me. She knew many poems, but this was her favourite.I shot an arrow into the air,It fell to earth, I knew not where;For, so swiftly it flew, the sightCould not follow it in its flight.I breathed a song... more...

I.  FROM FREDERICK GRAHAM. Mother, I smile at your alarms!I own, indeed, my Cousin’s charms,But, like all nursery maladies,Love is not badly taken twice.Have you forgotten Charlotte Hayes,My playmate in the pleasant daysAt Knatchley, and her sister, Anne,The twins, so made on the same plan,That one wore blue, the other white,To mark them to their father’s sight;And how, at Knatchley harvesting,You... more...

PROEM.    ‘Many speak wisely, some inerrably:Witness the beast who talk’d that should have bray’d,And Caiaphas that saidExpedient ’twas for all that One should die;But what availsWhen Love’s right accent from their wisdom fails,And the Truth-criers know not what they cry!Say, wherefore thou,As under bondage of some bitter vow,Warblest no word,When all the rest are shouting to be heard?Why... more...

HIS DREAM I swayed upon the gaudy stern The butt end of a steering oar, And everywhere that I could turn Men ran upon the shore. And though I would have hushed the crowd There was no mother’s son but said, “What is the figure in a shroud Upon a gaudy bed?” And fishes bubbling to the brim Cried out upon that thing beneath, It had such dignity of limb, By the sweet name of Death. Though I’d my... more...

THE BURIAL OF THE LINNET.Found in the garden—dead in his beauty.Ah! that a linnet should die in the spring!Bury him, comrades, in pitiful duty,Muffle the dinner-bell, solemnly ring.Bury him kindly—up in the corner;Bird, beast, and gold-fish are sepulchred there;Bid the black kitten march as chief mourner,Waving her tail like a plume in the air.Bury him nobly—next to the donkey;Fetch the old... more...

[213] THE "aesthetic" poetry is neither a mere reproduction of Greek or medieval poetry, nor only an idealisation of modern life and sentiment. The atmosphere on which its effect depends belongs to no simple form of poetry, no actual form of life. Greek poetry, medieval or modern poetry, projects, above the realities of its time, a world in which the forms of things are transfigured. Of that... more...

THE CHRONICLE OF THE DRUM. PART I. At Paris, hard by the Maine barriers,Whoever will choose to repair,Midst a dozen of wooden-legged warriorsMay haply fall in with old Pierre.On the sunshiny bench of a tavernHe sits and he prates of old wars,And moistens his pipe of tobaccoWith a drink that is named after Mars. The beer makes his tongue run the quicker,And as long as his tap never fails,Thus over his... more...