A Treasury of Favorite Poems

A

TREASURY

OF

FAVORITE

POEMS

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ISBN 978-1-4351-6502-1

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Contents

INTRODUCTION

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Sonnet I

Sonnet III

Sonnet XII

Sonnet XVIII

Sonnet XX

Sonnet XXIX

Sonnet XXX

Sonnet XXXIII

Sonnet XLV

Sonnet LXV

Sonnet LXXI

Sonnet LXXIII

Sonnet XCIV

Sonnet CVI

Sonnet CVII

Sonnet CXVI

Sonnet CXXIX

Sonnet CXXX

Sonnet CXXXVIII

Sonnet CXLVI

JOHN DONNE

Death

The Flea

The Sun Rising

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning

BEN JONSON

Song to Celia

Clerimont ’s Song

ROBERT HERRICK

Corinna’s Going a-Maying

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

ANDREW MARVELL

To His Coy Mistress

JOHN MILTON

Lycidas

Sonnet XIX: On His Blindness

THOMAS GRAY

Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard

ROBERT BURNS

To a Mouse

To a Louse

A Red, Red Rose

Tam O’ Shanter

WILLIAM BLAKE

Songs of Innocence

Introduction

The Shepherd

The Echoing Green

The Lamb

The Little Black Boy

The Blossom

The Chimney-Sweeper

The Little Boy Lost

The Little Boy Found

A Cradle Song

The Divine Image

Holy Thursday

Night

Spring

Nurse’s Song

Infant Joy

A Dream

Laughing Song

The School-Boy

On Another’s Sorrow

The Voice of the Ancient Bard

Songs of Experience

Introduction

Earth’s Answer

Infant Sorrow

My Pretty Rose-Tree

Ah! Sun-Flower

The Lily

The Sick Rose

Nurse’s Song

The Clod and the Pebble

The Garden of Love

The Fly

The Tiger

A Little Boy Lost

Holy Thursday

The Angel

The Little Girl Lost

The Little Girl Found

London

To Tirzah

The Human Abstract

The Chimney-Sweeper

A Poison-Tree

A Little Girl Lost

A Divine Image

The Little Vagabond

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

Resolution and Independence

Lines (Tintern Abbey)

Ode: Intimations of Immortality

Strange fits of passion I have known

She dwelt among untrodden ways

I travelled among unknown men

Three years she grew in sun and shower

A slumber did my spirit seal

I wandered lonely as a cloud

The world is too much with us

To a Skylark

The Solitary Reaper

Mutability

Ode to Duty

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Frost at Midnight

Kubla Khan

Dejection: An Ode

LORD BYRON

When we two parted

She walks in beauty

The Destruction of Sennacherib

So we ’ll go no more a roving

The Prisoner of Chillon

On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

Hymn to Intellectual Beauty

Mont Blanc

Ozymandias

Ode to the West Wind

To a Skylark

JOHN KEATS

On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer

Ode to a Nightingale

Ode on a Grecian Urn

Ode to Psyche

To Autumn

Ode on Melancholy

Sonnet: When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

Sonnet: To Sleep

Ode on Indolence

Sonnet: Bright Star

CLEMENT CLARK MOORE

A Visit from St. Nicholas

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

Thanatopsis

To a Waterfowl

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

The Barefoot Boy

Barbara Frietchie

What the Birds Said

Skipper Ireson’s Ride

Telling the Bees

The Sycamores

My Playmate

Maud Muller

My Triumph

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Uriel

Destiny

Ode: Inscribed to W. H. Channing

Concord Hymn

Fate

Days

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Snow-Flakes

Paul Revere ’s Ride

The Children’s Hour

The Wreck of the Hesperus

EDGAR ALLAN POE

The Raven

Ulalume

The Bells

Annabel Lee

The Haunted Palace

The Conqueror Worm

The City in the Sea

A Dream Within a Dream

Eldorado

WALT WHITMAN

One’s-Self I Sing

Starting from Paumanok

Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d

O Captain! My Captain!

EMILY DICKINSON

The heart asks pleasure first

Hope is the thing with feathers

When I hoped I feared

A route of evanescence

I started early, took my dog

As imperceptibly as grief

There’s a certain slant of light

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—

Wild nights! Wild nights!

A light exists in spring

Mine by the right of white election!

I cannot live with you

Split the lark and you’ll find the music

Safe in their alabaster chambers

I like a look of agony

Because I could not stop for Death

Our journey had advanced

I never lost as much but twice

I felt a funeral in my brain

In winter, in my room

The Bible is an antique volume

I reckon, when I count at all

I dwell in Possibility

My life had stood a loaded gun

After great pain a formal feeling comes—

From blank to blank

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

The Kraken

Mariana

The Lady of Shalott

Morte d ’Arthur

Locksley Hall

The Charge of the Light Brigade

Frater Ave Atque Vale

Crossing the Bar

EDWARD FITZGERALD

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

ROBERT BROWNING

Andrea del Sarto

Fra Lippo Lippi

The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed ’s Church

My Last Duchess

Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister

Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

From Sonnets  From  the  Portuguese

Sonnet VII

Sonnet XIV

Sonnet XXVII

Sonnet XLIII

MATTHEW ARNOLD

Dover Beach

Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Old Ironsides

The Voiceless

The Promise

The Living Temple

The Chambered Nautilus

Contentment

The Deacon’s Masterpiece; Or, the Wonderful One-Hoss Shay

Nearing the Snow-Line

EMILY BRONTË

Remembrance

Plead for Me

The Old Stoic

Stanzas

No coward soul is mine

JULIA WARD HOWE

My Last Dance

The Flag

Battle-Hymn of the Republic

HERMAN MELVILLE

America

The Portent

From the Conflict of Convictions

A Utilitarian View of the Monitor’s Fight

Malvern Hill

The House-Top

On the Slain at Chickamauga

A Meditation

Tom Deadlight

The Man-of-War Hawk

The Maldive Shark

Monody

GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

God ’s Grandeur

The Windhover

Pied Beauty

Carrion Comfort

No Worst, There Is None

I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI

The Blessed Damozel

Sudden Light

The Woodspurge

The Honeysuckle

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

Goblin Market

EDWARD LEAR

The Owl and the Pussy-Cat

The Jumblies

LEWIS CARROLL

The Hunting of the Snark

The Walrus and the Carpenter

Jabberwocky

FRANCIS THOMPSON

The Hound of Heaven

WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY

Invictus

Margaritæ Sorori

England, My England

JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY

The Old Swimmin’-Hole

The Days Gone By

When the Frost is on the Punkin

Little Orphant Annie

EUGENE FIELD

Our Two Opinions

Little Boy Blue

Seein’ Things

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod

The Rock-a-By Lady

The Duel

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

Requiem

He Hears with Gladdened Heart the Thunder

Away with Funeral Music

Gather Ye Roses

ELLA WHEELER WILCOX

Interlude

You Never Can Tell

You and Today

John Wesley’s Rule

Have Faith in God

Easy Enough to Be Pleasant

A Fragment

Life ’s Scars

I Love Your Lips

A Morning Prayer

Solitude

RUDYARD KIPLING

The Ballad of East and West

If

Gunga Din

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

The Double Vision of Michael Robartes

Easter,  1916

The Second Coming

THOMAS HARDY

Afterwards

Neutral Tones

The Darkling Thrush

Hap

Channel Firing

The Convergence of the Twain

A. E. HOUSMAN

When I Was One-and-Twenty

To an Athlete Dying Young  526 The night is freezing fast

ERNEST THAYER

Casey at the Bat

STEPHEN CRANE

War Is Kind

WALTER DE LA MARE

The Listeners

JOHN MCCRAE

In Flanders Fields

RUPERT BROOKE

War Sonnet V: The Soldier

AMY LOWELL

Lilacs

Night Clouds

Wind and Silver

Granadilla

Old Snow

Meeting-House Hill

New Heavens for Old

Patterns

Venus Transiens

A Lady

Solitaire

A Gift

Apology

Thompson’s Lunch Room—Grand Central Station

The Taxi

The Pike

Spring Longing

Vernal Equinox

Bright Sunlight

The Weather-Cock Points South

Shore Grass

EDWARD ARLINGTON ROBINSON

Luke Havergal

Richard Cory

Shadrach O’Leary

Miniver Cheevy

ROBERT  W. SERVICE

The Spell of the Yukon

The Call of the Wild

The Shooting of Dan McGrew

The Cremation of Sam McGee

Carry On!

EDGAR LEE MASTERS

From The  Spoon  River  Anthology

Serepta Mason

Amanda Barker

Constance Hately

Benjamin Pantier

Mrs. Benjamin Pantier

Reuben Pantier

Trainor, the Druggist

Minerva Jones

Indignation Jones

Doctor Meyers

Mrs. Meyers

Butch Weldy

A. D. Blood

Editor Whedon

Ralph Rhodes

Archibald Higbie

ROBERT FROST

Mending Wall

The Death of the Hired Man

After Apple-Picking

The Wood-Pile

The Road Not Taken

Birches

Design

EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

Renascence

The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver

WALLACE STEVENS

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

Of the Manner of Addressing Clouds

A High-Toned Old Christian Woman

The Snow Man

Sunday Morning

WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

Complaint

Queen-Ann’s-Lace

The Widow’s Lament in Springtime

The Great Figure

CARL SANDBURG

Chicago

The Harbor

Mag

Mamie

Under a Hat Rim

Fog

Nocturne in a Deserted Brickyard

Harrison Street Court

Sunset from Omaha Hotel Window

Adelaide Crapsey

Bilbea

Portrait of a Motor Car

Cool Tombs

Galoots

Manual System

Cahoots

JOHN MASEFIELD

Sea-Fever

Cargoes

A Wanderer’s Song

ALFRED NOYES

The Barrel-Organ

The Highwayman

A Song of Sherwood

EDGAR A. GUEST

See It Through

It Couldn’t Be Done

Defeat

The Junk Box

Father

Home

No Place to Go

People Liked Him

Just Folks

Reward

The Old, Old Story

Hard Luck

SARA TEASDALE

After Love

Jewels

The Look

At Night

Moods

Summer Night, Riverside

The Broken Field

Let It Be Forgotten

A Little While

There Will Come Soft Rains

The Unchanging

The Sanctuary

Night Song at Amalfi

Spring Night

I Shall Not Care

The Long Hill

Water Lilies

Tired

JOYCE KILMER

Trees

Martin

The Apartment House

Memorial Day

T.S. ELIOT

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

INTRODUCTION

*

The hundreds of poems selected for this volume span more than four centuries, from the seventeenth-century  sonnets of William Shakespeare to the modernist poems of early twentieth-century poets Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, and T. S. Eliot. Although we have limited selections to poems in the English language, all of the poets represented were critically acclaimed in their respective eras and in many cases their poems rank among the best works of literature in their time. A number of these poems were immensely popular and found a wide readership, and some of their writers enjoyed the kind of renown in their time that we confer on celebrities today.

Many of the selections feature lines that are among the most quoted in literature, and that will be familiar to readers who have never read the poems in which they appear. Is there a reader not familiar with Shakespeare ’s love lyric, Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day, or Ben Jonson’s Drink to me only with thine eyes/And I will pledge with mine—a love poem so popular that it was later set to music? What was true of the poems of the past is true of more modern verse. Ella Wheeler Wilcox, writing at the turn of the twentieth century, began her poem Solitude with the since oft-quoted words of wisdom, Laugh, and the world laughs with you;/Weep and you weep alone. William Ernest Henley, also writing at the turn of the twentieth century, gave us one of the most quoted lines of inspirational verse when he concluded his poem Invictus with I am the master of my fate:/I am the captain of my soul. Lines such as these, which are frequently sampled today for books of famous quotations or put into service as epigraphs for works of fiction and non-fiction, attest to the unique power of poets and their poems to sum up in a handful of carefully chosen words or a carefully phrased observation the essence of human experience in a way that speaks memorably to people over time and across cultures.

The subjects of the poems are as varied as the poets who wrote them. Love, one of the most popular poetic themes, is the theme of William Shakespeare ’s sonnets, William Wordsworth’s Lucy poems, and Edgar Allan Poe ’s elegy  to his lost Annabel Lee. There are inspirational poems by William Henley and Rudyard Kipling and poems concerned with death and disillusionment by A. E. Housman and Edward Arlington Robinson. Some poems are deeply personal, such as John Milton’s sonnet on his blindness, while others, including Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ozymandias, are profoundly political. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and John McCrae are represented by poems on serious patriotic themes, while Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll provide delightful nonsense verse and Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Walter de la Mare flights of fancy that verge on the supernatural. There are poems expressing private yearning from William Butler Yeats and John Masefield and poems that generalize about the human condition from Ella Wheeler Wilcox and Thomas Hardy. Poems from John Keats and Emily Dickinson are meditative and reflective, while poems from Alfred Noyes and Edna St. Vincent Millay relate their stories in straightforward narratives. Some poems, such as those of Matthew Arnold and Robert Frost, are rooted in fundamental human experience, while poems from William Blake and Joyce Kilmer look to divine authority.

Although some of these poems share themes and verse forms, each is a unique work, individualized through the means by which the poet uses metaphor, allusion, symbolism, and rhyme to elaborate its ideas. All suggest a world much greater than can be encompassed within their words, and the way in which they transport the reader to that realm is a large part of the pleasure they offer.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

*

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

Come live with me and be my Love,

And we will all the pleasures prove

That hills and valleys, dales and fields,

Or woods or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,

And see the shepherds feed their flocks

By shallow rivers, to whose falls

Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses

And a thousand fragrant posies;

A cap of flowers, and a kirtle

Embroider’d all with leaves of myrtle.

A gown made of the finest wool

Which from our pretty lambs we pull;

Fair-linèd slippers for the cold,

With buckles of the purest gold.

A belt of straw and ivy-buds

With coral clasps and amber studs:

And if these pleasures may thee move,

Come live with me and be my Love.

The shepherd swains shall dance and sing

For thy delight each May morning:

If these delights thy mind may move,

Then live with me and be my Love.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

*

Sonnet I

From fairest creatures we desire increase,

That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,

But as the riper should by time decease,

His tender heir might bear his memory:

But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,

Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel,

Making a famine where abundance lies,

Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.

Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament

And only herald to the gaudy spring,

Within thine own bud buriest thy content

And tender churl mak’st waste in niggarding.

Pity the world, or else this glutton be,

To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.

Sonnet III

Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest

Now is the time that face should form another;

Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,

Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.

For where is she so fair whose unear’d womb

Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?

Or who is he so fond will be the tomb

Of his self-love, to stop posterity?

Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee

Calls back the lovely April of her prime,

So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,

Despite of wrinkles this, thy golden time.

But if thou live remembered not to be,

Die single, and thine image dies with thee.

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.

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 untrimmed:

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,

Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Sonnet XX

A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted,

Hast thou the master mistress of my passion;

A woman’s gentle heart but not acquainted

With shifting change as is false women’s fashion,

An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling:

Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;

A man in hue all hues in his controlling,

Which steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth.

And for a woman wert thou first created;

Till Nature, as she wrought thee fell a-doting,

And by addition me of thee defeated,

By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.

But since she pricked thee out for women’s pleasure,

Mine be thy love and thy love’s use their treasure.

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 my self and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

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 remembered such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Sonnet XXX

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I 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, unus’d 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 XXXIII

Full many a glorious morning have I seen

Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,

Kissing with golden face the meadows green,

Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;

Anon permit the basest clouds to ride,

With ugly rack on his celestial face,

And from the forlorn world his visage hide,

Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:

Even so my sun one early morn did shine,

With all triumphant splendour on my brow;

But, out! alack! he was but one hour mine,

The region cloud hath masked him from me now.

Yet him for this, my love no whit disdaineth;

Suns of the world may stain, when heaven’s sun staineth.

Sonnet XLV

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments

Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rime;

But you shall shine more bright in these contents

Than unswept stone, besmear’d with sluttish time

When wasteful war shall statues overturn,

And broils root out the work of masonry,

Nor Mars his sword nor war’s quick fire shall burn

The living record of your memory.

’Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity

Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room

Even in the eyes of all posterity

That wear this world out to the ending doom.

So till the judgment that your self arise,

You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.

Sonnet LXV

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,

But sad mortality o’ersways their power,

How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,

Whose action is no stronger than a flower?

O how shall summer’s honey breath hold out

Against the wrackful siege of battering days,

When rocks impregnable are not so stout,

Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?

O fearful meditation! where, alack,

Shall Time’s best jewel from Time’s chest lie hid?

Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?

Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?

O, none, unless this miracle have might,

That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

Sonnet LXXI

No longer mourn for me when I am dead

Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell

Give warning to the world that I am fled

From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell:

Nay if you read this line, remember not

The hand that writ it; for I love you so,

That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,

If thinking on me then should make you woe.

O, if , I say, you look upon this verse,

When I (perhaps) compounded am with clay,

Do not so much as my poor name rehearse,

But let your love even with my life decay;

Lest the wise world should look into your moan,

And mock you with me after I am gone.

Sonnet LXXIII

That time of year thou mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou seest the twilight of such day

As after sunset fadeth in the west;

Which by and by black night doth take away,

Death’s second self that seals up all in rest.

In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,

As the death-bed, whereon it must expire,

Consumed with that which it was nourish’d by.

This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.

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;

Tibey 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 it self 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.

Sonnet CVI

When in the chronicle of wasted time

I see descriptions of the fairest wights,

And beauty making beautiful old rime,

In praise of ladies dead, and lovely knights,

Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty’s best,

Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,

I see their antique pen would have express’d,

Even such a beauty as you master now.

So all their praises are but prophecies

Of this our time, all you prefiguring;

And for they looked but with divining eyes,

They had not skill enough your worth to sing:

For we, which now behold these present days,

Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.

Sonnet CVII

Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul

Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,

Can yet the lease of my true love control,

Suppos’d as forfeit to a confin’d doom.

The mortal moon hath her eclipse endur’d,

And the sad augurs mock their own presage;

Incertainties now crown themselves assur’d,

And peace proclaims olives of endless age.

Now with the drops of this most balmy time

My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes,

Since, spite of him, I’ll live in this poor rime,

While he insults o’er dull and speechless tribes:

And thou in this shalt find thy monument,

When tyrants’ crests and tombs of brass are spent.

Sonnet CXVI

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which 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 prov’d,

I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.

Sonnet CXXIX

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame

Is lust in action; and till action, lust

Is perjur’d, murderous, bloody, full of blame,

Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;

Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight;

Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,

Past reason hated, as a swallow’d bait,

On purpose laid to make the taker mad:

Mad in pursuit, and in possession so;

Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;

A bliss in proof, and prov’d, a very woe;

Before, a joy propos’d; behind, a dream.

All this the world well knows; yet none knows well

To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

Sonnet CXXX

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips’ red:

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

And in some perfumes is there more delight

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound:

I grant I never saw a goddess go;

My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:

And yet by heaven I think my love as rare

As any she belied with false compare.

Sonnet CXXXVIII

When my love swears that she is made of truth,

I do believe her though I know she lies,

That she might think me some untutor’d youth,

Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties.

Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,

Although she knows my days are past the best,

Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue:

On both sides thus is simple truth supprest.

But wherefore says she not she is unjust?

And wherefore say not I that I am old?

O, love’s best habit is in seeming trust,

And age in love, loves not to have years told:

Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,

And in our faults by lies we flattered be.

Sonnet CXLVI

Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,

Fool’d by these rebel powers that thee array,

Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth

Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?

Why so large cost having so short a lease,

Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?

Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,

Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body’s end?

Then, soul live thou upon thy servant’s loss,

And let that pine to aggravate thy store;

Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;

Within be fed, without be rich no more:

So shall thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,

And Death once dead, there’s no more dying then.

JOHN DONNE

*

Death

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so:

For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me.

From Rest and Sleep, which but thy picture be,

Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow;

And soonest our best men with thee do go—

Rest of their bones and souls’ delivery!

Thou’rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;

And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well

And better than thy stroke. Why swell’st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally,

And Death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die!

*

The Flea

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,

How little that, which thou deny’st me is;

Me it suck’d first, and now sucks thee,

And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;

Thou know’st that this cannot be said

A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead;

Yet this enjoys before it woo,

And pamper’d swells with one blood made of two;

And this, alas! is more than we could do.

Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,

Where we almost, yea, more than married are.

This flea is you and I, and this

Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.

Though parents grudge, and you, we’re met,

And cloister’d in these living walls of jet.

Though use make you apt to kill me,

Let not to that self-murder added be,

And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since

Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?

Wherein could this flea guilty be,

Except in that drop which it suck’d from thee?

Yet thou triumph’st, and say’st that thou

Find’st not thyself nor me the weaker now.

’Tis true; then learn how false fears be:

Just so much honour, when thou yield’st to me,

Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.

*

The Sun Rising

Busy old fool, unruly Sun,

Why dost thou thus,

Through windows, and through curtains, call on us?

Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run?

Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide

Late school-boys, or sour prentices,

Go tell court-huntsmen, that the king will ride,

Call country ants to harvest offices;

Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,

No hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beams so reverend and strong,

Why shouldst thou think?

I could eclipse, and cloud them with a wink,

But that I would not lose her sight so long.

If her eyes have not blinded thine,

Look, and to-morrow late tell me,

Whether both th’ Indias of spice and mine

Be where thou left’st them, or lie here with me.

Ask for those kings, whom thou saw’st yesterday,

And thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay.

She’s all states, and all princes I;

Nothing else is;

Princes do but play us; compared to this,

All honour’s mimic, all wealth alchymy.

Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we,

In that the world’s contract thus;

Thine age asks ease, and since thy dutie be

To warm the world, that’s done in warming us.

Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;

This bed thy centre is, these walls thy sphere.

*

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning

As virtuous men pass mildly away,

And whisper to their souls to go,

Whilst some of their sad friends do say,

Now his breath goes, and some say, No.

So let us melt, and make no noise,

No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;

’Twere profanation of our joys

To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th’ earth brings harms and fears;

Men reckon what it did, and meant;

But trepidation of the spheres,

Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers’ love

—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit

Of absence, ’cause it doth remove

The thing which elemented it.

But we by a love so far refined,

That ourselves know not what it is,

Inter-assurèd of the mind,

Care less eyes, lips and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,

Though I must go, endure not yet

A breach, but an expansion,

Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so

As stiff twin compasses are two;

Thy soul, the fix’d foot, makes no show

To move, but doth, if th’ other do.

And though it in the centre sit,

Yet, when the other far doth roam,

It leans, and hearkens after it,

And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,

Like th’ other foot, obliquely rUn;

Thy firmness makes my circle just,

And makes me end where I begun.

BEN JONSON

*

Song 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 honouring 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.

*

Clerimont’s Song

Still to be neat, still to be drest,

As you were going to a feast;

Still to be powdered, still perfumed:

Lady, it is to be presumed,

Though art’s hid causes are not found,

All is not sweet, all is not sound.

Give me a look, give me a face,

That makes simplicity a grace;

Robes loosely flowing, hair as free;

Such sweet neglect more taketh me

Than all the adulteries of art:

They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.

ROBERT HERRICK

*

Corinna’s Going A-Maying

Get up, get up for shame! The blooming morn

Upon her wings presents the god unshorn.

See how Aurora throws her fair

Fresh-quilted colours through the air:

Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see

The dew bespangling herb and tree!

Each flower has wept and bow’d toward the east

Above an hour since, yet you not drest;

Nay! not so much as out of bed?

When all the birds have matins said

And sung their thankful hymns, ’tis sin,

Nay, profanation, to keep in,

Whereas a thousand virgins on this day

Spring sooner than the lark, to fetch in May.

Rise and put on your foliage, and be seen

To come forth, like the spring-time, fresh and green,

And sweet as Flora. Take no care

For jewels for your gown or hair:

Fear not; the leaves will strew

Gems in abundance upon you:

Besides, the childhood of the day has kept,

Against you come, some orient pearls unwept.

Come, and receive them while the light

Hangs on the dew-locks of the night:

And Titan on the eastern hill

Retires himself, or else stands still

Till you come forth! Wash, dress, be brief in praying.

Few beads are best when once we go a-Maying.

Come, my Corinna, come; and coming, mark

How each field turns a street, each street a park,

Made green and trimm’d with trees! see how

Devotion gives each house a bough

Or branch! each porch, each door, ere this,

An ark, a tabernacle is,

Made up of white-thorn neatly interwove,

As if here were those cooler shades of love.

Can such delights be in the street

And open fields, and we not see't?

Come, we'll abroad: and let's obey

The proclamation made for May,

And sin no more, as we have done, by staying;

But, my Corinna, come, let's go a-Maying.

There’s not a budding boy or girl this day

But is got up and gone to bring in May.

A deal of youth ere this is come

Back, and with white-thorn laden home.

Some have despatch’d their cakes and cream,

Before that we have left to dream:

And some have wept and woo’d, and plighted troth,

And chose their priest, ere we can cast off sloth:

Many a green-gown has been given,

Many a kiss, both odd and even:

Many a glance, too, has been sent

From out the eye, love’s firmament:

Many a jest told of the keys betraying

This night, and locks pick’d: yet we're not a-Maying!

Come, let us go, while we are in our prime,

And take the harmless folly of the time!

We shall grow old apace, and die

Before we know our liberty.

Our life is short, and our days run

As fast away as does the sun.

And, as a vapour or a drop of rain,

Once lost, can ne’er be found again,

So when or you or I are made

A fable, song, or fleeting shade,

All love, all liking, all delight

Lies drown'd with us in endless night.

Then, while time serves, and we are but decaying,

Come, my Corinna, come, let 's go a-Maying.

*

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old Time is still a-flying:

And this same flower that smiles to-day

To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,

The higher he’s a-getting,

The sooner will his race be run,

And nearer he’s to setting.

That age is best which is the first,

When youth and blood are warmer;

But being spent, the worse, and worst

Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,

And while ye may, go marry:

For having lost but once your prime,

You may for ever tarry.

ANDREW MARVELL

*

To His Coy Misteress

Had we but world enough and time,

This coyness, lady, were no crime.

We would sit down and think which way

To walk, and pass our long love’s day.

Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side

Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide

Of Humber would complain. I would

Love you ten years before the Flood,

And you should, if you please, refuse

Till the conversion of the Jews.

My vegetable love should grow

Vaster than empires and more slow.

An hundred years should go to praise

Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;

Two hundred to adore each breast,

But thirty thousand to the rest;

An age at least to every part,

And the last age should show your heart.

For, lady, you deserve this state,

Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear

Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near,

And yonder all before us lie

Deserts of vast eternity.

Thy beauty shall no more be found,

Nor in thy marble vault shall sound

My echoing song; then worms shall try

That long-preserved virginity,

And your quaint honour turn to dust,

And into ashes all my lust.

The grave’s a fine and private place,

But none, I think, do there embrace.

Now, therefore, while the youthful hue

Sits on thy skin like morning dew,

And while thy willing soul transpires

At every pore with instant fires,

Now, let us sport us while we may;

And now, like amorous birds of prey,

Rather at once our time devour,

Than languish in his slow-chapt power!

Let us roll all our strength, and all

Our sweetness up into one ball;

And tear our pleasures with rough strife,

Thorough the iron gates of life!

Thus, though we cannot make our sun

Stand still, yet we will make him run.

JOHN MILTON

*

Lycidas

a lament for a friend drowned in his passage from

chester on the irish Seas, 1637

Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more

Ye myrtles brown, with ivy nevcr-sere,

I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,

And with forced fingers rude

Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.

Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear,

Compels me to disturb your season due;

For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,

Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.

Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew

Himself to sing, and build the lofty rime.

He must not float upon his watery bier

Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,

Without the meed of some melodious tear.

Begin then, Sisters of the sacred well,

That from heneath the seat of Jove doth spring;

Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string.

Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse—

So may some gentle Muse

With lucky words favour my destined urn,

And as he passes turn,

And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud—

For we were nursed upon the self-same hill,

Fed the same flock by fountain, shade, and rill;

Together both, ere the high lawns appeared

Under the opening eyelids of the Morn,

Wc drove a-field, and both together heard

What time the grey-fly winds her sultry horn,

Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night,

Oft till the star that rose at evening, bright,

Toward heaven’s descent had sloped his westering wheel.

Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute.

Tempered to the oaten flute;

Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel

From the glad sound would not be absent long,

And old Damcetas loved to hear our song.

But oh! the heavy change, now thou art gone,

Now thou art gone, and never must return!

Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods and desert caves,

With wild thyme and the gadding vine o’ergrown,

And all their echoes mourn.

The willows, and the hazel-copses green,

Shall now no more be seen

Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays.

As killing as the canker to the rose,

Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze,

Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear,

When first the white-thorn blows;

Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherds’ ear.

Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep

Closed o’er the head of your loved Lycidas?

For neither were ye playing on the steep,

Where your old bards, the fhmous Druids, lie,

Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high,

Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream.

Ay me, I