William Blake (1757-1827)

Infant Sorrow
1My mother groan'd! my father wept.
2Into the dangerous world I leapt:
3Helpless, naked, piping loud,
4Like a fiend hid in a cloud.
5Struggling in my father's hands,
6Striving against my swaddling bands,
7Bound and weary, I thought best
8To sulk upon my mother's breast.

The Tyger
1Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
2In the forests of the night,
3What immortal hand or eye
4Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
5In what distant deeps or skies
6Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
7On what wings dare he aspire?
8What the hand dare seize the fire?
9And what shoulder, and what art,
10Could twist the sinews of thy heart,
11And when thy heart began to beat,
12What dread hand? and what dread feet?
13What the hammer? what the chain?
14In what furnace was thy brain?
15What the anvil? what dread grasp
16Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
17When the stars threw down their spears,
18And water'd heaven with their tears,
19Did he smile his work to see?
20Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
21Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
22In the forests of the night,
23What immortal hand or eye,
24Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
Notes
8] seize the fire: a reference to the myth of Prometheus.
17] stars: i.e., angels, fighting in the original war in heaven.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

The Knight's Tomb
1Where is the grave of Sir Arthur O'Kellyn?
2Where may the grave of that good man be?-3By the side of a spring, on the breast of Helvellyn,
4Under the twigs of a young birch tree!
5The oak that in summer was sweet to hear,
6And rustled its leaves in the fall of the year,
7And whistled and roared in the winter alone,
8Is gone,--and the birch in its stead is grown.-9The Knight's bones are dust,
10And his good sword rust;-11His soul is with the saints, I trust.
Something Childish, but Very Natural (Written in Germany)
1 If I had but two little wings
2 And were a little feathery bird,
3 To you I'd fly, my dear!
4But thoughts like these are idle things,
5 And I stay here.
6 But in my sleep to you I fly:
7 I'm always with you in my sleep!
8 The world is all one's own.
9But then one wakes, and where am I?
10 All, all alone.
11 Sleep stays not, though a monarch bids:
12 So I love to wake ere break of day:
13 For though my sleep be gone,
14Yet while 'tis dark, one shuts one's lids,
15 And still dreams on.
To Asra
1Are there two things, of all which men possess,
2That are so like each other and so near,
3As mutual Love seems like to Happiness?
4Dear Asra, woman beyond utterance dear!
5This Love which ever welling at my heart,
6Now in its living fount doth heave and fall,
7Now overflowing pours thro' every part
8Of all my frame, and fills and changes all,
9Like vernal waters springing up through snow,
10This Love that seeming great beyond the power
11Of growth, yet seemeth ever more to grow,
12Could I transmute the whole to one rich Dower
13Of Happy Life, and give it all to Thee,
14Thy lot, methinks, were Heaven, thy age, Eternity!
Notes
1] I.e., to Sara Hutchinson. The manuscript of this sonnet is pasted inside the cover of her copy of the
Christabel manuscript in the Victoria College Coleridge collection, and may have been sent to her with it.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

There was a Boy
1There was a Boy; ye knew him well, ye cliffs
2And islands of Winander! many a time,
3At evening, when the earliest stars began
4To move along the edges of the hills,
5Rising or setting, would he stand alone,
6Beneath the trees, or by the glimmering lake;
7And there, with fingers interwoven, both hands
8Pressed closely palm to palm and to his mouth
9Uplifted, he, as through an instrument,
10Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls
11That they might answer him.--And they would shout
12Across the watery vale, and shout again,
13Responsive to his call,--with quivering peals,
14And long halloos, and screams, and echoes loud
15Redoubled and redoubled; concourse wild
16Of jocund din! And, when there came a pause
17Of silence such as baffled his best skill:
18Then, sometimes, in that silence, while he hung
19Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise
20Has carried far into his heart the voice
21Of mountain-torrents; or the visible scene
22Would enter unawares into his mind
23With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,
24Its woods, and that uncertain heaven received
25Into the bosom of the steady lake.
26 This boy was taken from his mates, and died
27In childhood, ere he was full twelve years old.
28Pre-eminent in beauty is the vale
29Where he was born and bred: the churchyard hangs
30Upon a slope above the village-school;
31And through that churchyard when my way has led
32On summer-evenings, I believe that there
33A long half-hour together I have stood
34Mute--looking at the grave in which he lies!
Notes
1] Later incorporated in The Prelude, V, 364-97. Composed in Germany in November 1798. In the earliest
manuscript (Nov. 1798), the poem or reminiscence ends with line 25, there is no reference to death, and the
remembered boy who mimicked the owls was the poet himself.
2] Winander: Windermere, the largest of the English lakes, in Cumbria.
28] The vale of Esthwaite with its village of Hawkshead, the school which Wordsworth attended, and the
nearby churchyard as here described. The schoolmate whose grave was in the churchyard was probably John
Vickers who died in 1782, when Wordsworth was twelve.

Lucy: She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways

1She dwelt among the untrodden ways
2 Beside the springs of Dove,
3A Maid whom there were none to praise
4 And very few to love:
5A violet by a mossy stone
6 Half hidden from the eye!
7--Fair as a star, when only one
8 Is shining in the sky.
9She lived unknown, and few could know
10 When Lucy ceased to be;
11But she is in her grave, and, oh,
12 The difference to me!
Notes
1] Composed in Germany. The Lucy who is the subject of a small group of poems, most of them written in the
winter of 1798-99, has never been identified, if she ever existed except as a creation of the poet's imagination.
A widely held theory is that the poems represent an attempt to give literary expression and distance to
Wordsworth's feeling of affection for his sister. See Coleridge's comment on the next poem.

She Was a Phantom of Delight

1 She was a Phantom of delight
2When first she gleamed upon my sight;
3A lovely Apparition, sent
4To be a moment's ornament;
5Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair;
6Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair;
7But all things else about her drawn
8From May-time and the cheerful Dawn;
9A dancing Shape, an Image gay,
10To haunt, to startle, and way-lay.
11I saw her upon nearer view,
12A Spirit, yet a Woman too!
13Her household motions light and free,
14And steps of virgin-liberty;
15A countenance in which did meet
16Sweet records, promises as sweet;
17A Creature not too bright or good
18For human nature's daily food;
19For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
20Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.
21And now I see with eye serene
22The very pulse of the machine;
23A Being breathing thoughtful breath,
24A Traveller between life and death;
25The reason firm, the temperate will,
26Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
27A perfect Woman, nobly planned,
28To warn, to comfort, and command;
29And yet a Spirit still, and bright
30With something of angelic light.

George Gordon Lord Byron (1788-1824)

She Walks in Beauty
1She walks in beauty, like the night
2 Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
3And all that's best of dark and bright
4 Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
5Thus mellow'd to that tender light
6 Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
7One shade the more, one ray the less,
8 Had half impair'd the nameless grace
9Which waves in every raven tress,
10 Or softly lightens o'er her face;
11Where thoughts serenely sweet express
12 How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
13And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
14 So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
15The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
16 But tell of days in goodness spent,
17A mind at peace with all below,
18 A heart whose love is innocent!
Notes
1] "She" is Byron's cousin, Mrs. Wilmot, whom he met at a party in a mourning dress of spangled black.

Stanzas for Music

1 There be none of Beauty's daughters
2 With a magic like thee;
3And like music on the waters
4 Is thy sweet voice to me:
5When, as if its sound were causing
6The charmed ocean's pausing,
7The waves lie still and gleaming,
8And the lull'd winds seem dreaming:
9 And the midnight moon is weaving
10 Her bright chain o'er the deep;
11Whose breast is gently heaving,
12 As an infant's asleep:
13So the spirit bows before thee,
14To listen and adore thee;
15With a full but soft emotion,
16Like the swell of Summer's ocean.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

To the Moon
I
1 Art thou pale for weariness
2 Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
3Wandering companionless
4 Among the stars that have a different birth, -5 And ever changing, like a joyless eye
6 That finds no object worth its constancy?
II
7Thou chosen sister of the Spirit,
8 That gazes on thee till in thee it pities ...

Time
1 Unfathomable Sea! whose waves are years,
2 Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe
3Are brackish with the salt of human tears!
4 Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow
5Claspest the limits of mortality!
6 And sick of prey, yet howling on for more,
7Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore;
8 Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm,
9 Who shall put forth on thee,
10 Unfathomable Sea?

Mutability
1 The flower that smiles to-day
2 To-morrow dies;
3All that we wish to stay
4 Tempts and then flies.
5What is this world's delight?
6Lightning that mocks the night,
7 Brief even as bright.
8 Virtue, how frail it is!
9 Friendship how rare!
10Love, how it sells poor bliss
11 For proud despair!
12But we, though soon they fall,
13Survive their joy, and all
14 Which ours we call.
15 Whilst skies are blue and bright,
16 Whilst flowers are gay,
17Whilst eyes that change ere night
18 Make glad the day;
19Whilst yet the calm hours creep,
20Dream thou--and from thy sleep
21 Then wake to weep.

John Keats (1795-1821)

The Human Seasons
1Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;
2 There are four seasons in the mind of man:
3He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
4 Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
5He has his Summer, when luxuriously
6 Spring's honied cud of youthful thought he loves
7To ruminate, and by such dreaming high
8 Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
9His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
10 He furleth close; contented so to look
11On mists in idleness--to let fair things
12 Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.
13He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
14Or else he would forego his mortal nature.

When I have Fears that I may Cease to Be

1When I have fears that I may cease to be
2 Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
3Before high-piled books, in charactery,
4 Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain;
5When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
6 Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
7And think that I may never live to trace
8 Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
9And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
10 That I shall never look upon thee more,
11Never have relish in the faery power
12 Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore
13Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
14Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.
Notes
1] Sent to Reynolds in a letter dated January 31, 1818.

Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

Break, break, break

1Break, break, break,
2 On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
3And I would that my tongue could utter
4 The thoughts that arise in me.
5O, well for the fisherman's boy,
6 That he shouts with his sister at play!
7O, well for the sailor lad,
8 That he sings in his boat on the bay!
9And the stately ships go on
10 To their haven under the hill;
11But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,
12 And the sound of a voice that is still!
13Break, break, break
14 At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
15But the tender grace of a day that is dead
16 Will never come back to me.
Notes
1] "Made in a Lincolnshire lane at five o'clock in the morning, between blossoming hedges"
(Tennyson). It is in memory of the poet's friend, Arthur Hallam, who died in 1833.

Late, Late, so Late

1 Late, late, so late! and dark the night and chill!
2Late, late, so late! but we can enter still.
3Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now.
4 No light had we: for that we do repent;
5And learning this, the bridegroom will relent.
6Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now.
7 No light: so late! and dark and chill the night!
8O, let us in, that we may find the light!
9Too late, too late: ye cannot enter now.
10 Have we not heard the bridgegroom is so sweet?
11O, let us in, tho' late, to kiss his feet!
12No, no, too late! ye cannot enter now."
Notes
1] From "Guinevere" and based on the parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins. See St. Matthew 25.

In Memoriam A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII: 2

1Old Yew, which graspest at the stones
2 That name the under-lying dead,
3 Thy fibres net the dreamless head,
4Thy roots are wrapt about the bones.
5The seasons bring the flower again,
6 And bring the firstling to the flock;
7 And in the dusk of thee, the clock
8Beats out the little lives of men.
9O not for thee the glow, the bloom,
10 Who changest not in any gale,
11 Nor branding summer suns avail
12To touch thy thousand years of gloom:
13And gazing on thee, sullen tree,
14 Sick for thy stubborn hardihood,
15 I seem to fail from out my blood
16And grow incorporate into thee.
Notes
1] First published anonymously in the volume with this title in 1850, though the 131 sections or separate
poems that compose it were written and rewritten from 1833 to the time of publication. Two of the 131
sections were added in later editions: LIX in 1851, and XXXIX in 1872. The poem is in memory of
Tennyson's friend Arthur Henry Hallam, son of the eminent historian. Hallam was engaged to marry
Tennyson's sister Emily, when he died suddenly of a stroke in Vienna on September 15, 1833, at the age of
twenty-two. Although written without any plan at first, the parts of the poem were finally arranged in a pattern
to cover the period of about three years following Hallam's death. Tennyson himself insisted that it is "a
poem, not a biography .... The different moods of sorrow as in a drama are dramatically given, and my
conviction that fear, doubts, and suffering will find answer and relief only through Faith in a God of Love. `I'
is not always the author speaking of himself, but the voice of the human race speaking through him."
OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII: he died in 1833.
7] the clock: of St. Andrew's Church, Clevedon, behind the yew whose pollen dusts the clock-face, while its
roots penetrate the coffin of Hallam buried nearby. Actually Hallam was buried in a vault inside the church.
Tennyson only imagines the funeral.