PolyArchive

Ode on a Grecian Urn John Keats Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,        Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express        A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape        Of deities or mortals, or of both,                In Tempe or the […]

In Memoriam A. H. H. OBIT MDCCCXXXIII: 15 Alfred, Lord Tennyson To-night the winds begin to rise          And roar from yonder dropping day:          The last red leaf is whirl’d away, The rooks are blown about the skies; The forest crack’d, the waters curl’d,          The cattle huddled on the lea;          And wildly dash’d on tower and […]

Invocation To Misery Percy Bysshe Shelley 1. Come, be happy!—sit near me, Shadow-vested Misery: Coy, unwilling, silent bride, Mourning in thy robe of pride, Desolation—deified! 2. Come, be happy!—sit near me: Sad as I may seem to thee, I am happier far than thou, Lady, whose imperial brow Is endiademed with woe. 3. Misery! we […]

A Birthday Christina Rossetti My heart is like a singing bird                   Whose nest is in a water’d shoot; My heart is like an apple-tree                   Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit; My heart is like a rainbow shell                   That paddles in a halcyon sea; My heart is gladder than all these                   Because my love is […]

A Song from the Suds Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) From Little Women QUEEN of my tub, I merrily sing, While the white foam rises high; And sturdily wash, and rinse, and wring, And fasten the clothes to dry; Then out in the free fresh air they swing, Under the sunny sky. I wish we could […]

Going, Going Philip Larkin I thought it would last my time – The sense that, beyond the town, There would always be fields and farms, Where the village louts could climb Such trees as were not cut down; I knew there’d be false alarms In the papers about old streets And split level shopping, but […]

To Sir Richard Fanshaw, Upon His Translation Of ‘Pastor Fido’ Sir John Denham (1615-1669) Such is our pride, our folly, or our fate, That few but such as cannot write, translate. But what in them is want of art or voice, In thee is either modesty or choice. While this great piece, restored by thee, […]

Ulysses (1833) Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson(1809–92) It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. I cannot rest from travel: I will drink […]

The Literary World Philip Larkin I ‘Finally, after five months of my life during which I could write nothing that would have satisfied me, and for which no power will compensate me…’ My dear Kafka, When you’ve had five years of it, not five months, Five years of an irresistible force meeting an immoveable object […]

Memory Siegfried Sassoon (Limerick, 1 February 1918) When I was young my heart and head were light, And I was gay and feckless as a colt Out in the fields, with morning in the may, Wind on the grass, wings in the orchard bloom. O thrilling sweet, my joy, when life was free And all […]

I had the first couple of lines, with their curious, beautiful syntax, stuck in my head today. I struggled to recall where they were from. Shakespeare, obviously, but where? One of the plays with end-rhymed soliloquies? That narrows it, but contextually, they could fit in many places. Shakespeare is full of suitable matches. I had […]

Written from a hospital bed in 1875, after the 26-year-old Henley had had his leg amputated as a result of tuberculosis of the bone. Originally untitled, Arthur Quiller-Couch bestowed the name “Invictus” (“Unvanquished”) when he included it in The Oxford Book of English Verse. This was the poem Nelson Mandela kept on a scrap of […]

The Chilterns Rupert Brooke Your hands, my dear, adorable, Your lips of tenderness – Oh, I’ve loved you faithfully and well, Three years, or a bit less. It wasn’t a success. Thank God, that’s done! and I’ll take the road, Quit of my youth and you, The Roman road to Wendover By Tring and Lilley […]

Locksley Hall Alfred, Lord Tennyson Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet ‘t is early morn: Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle-horn. ‘T is the place, and all around it, as of old, the curlews call, Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall; Locksley Hall, […]

Gerard Manley Hopkins The Half-way House Love I was shewn upon the mountain-side And bid to catch Him ere the drop of day. See, Love, I creep and Thou on wings dost ride: Love it is evening now and Thou away; Love, it grows darker here and Thou art above; Love, come down to me […]