The Penguin Book of Victorian Verse Book

The Penguin Book of Victorian Verse Preface Acknowledgments Introduction
Prelude: To Victoria
(i) Anonymous: Queen Victoria (1837)
(ii) Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-61): from Crowned and Wedded (1840)
(iii) Thomas Cooper (1805-92): from The Purgatory of Suicides (1845)
(iv) Alfred Tennyson (1809-92): To the Queen (1851)
(v) A. E. Housman (1859-1936): 1887
(vi) Mary Montgomerie Lamb (1843-1905): Victoria, 21st June 1887
(vvii) Thomas Hardy (1840-1928): V. R. 1819-1901

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
1. "Hark! 'tis the Thrush, undaunted, undeprest"
2. Upon the Sight of the Portrait of a Female Friend
3. "Near Anio's stream, I spied a gentle Dove"
4. "So fair, so sweet, withal so sensitive"
5. On the Projected Kendal and Windermere Railway
6. "The unremitting voice of nightly streams"
7. Sonnet (To an Octogernarian)

Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864)
8. "Along this coast I led the vacant Hours"
9. "Where alders rise up dark and dense"
10. "The leaves are falling; so am I"
11. To a Cyclamen
12. Plays
13. Cottage Left for London
14. Malvolio
15. The Duke of York's Statue
16. "I strove with none, for none was worth my strife"

William Stewart Rose (1775-1843)
17. Sonnet ("On a December's morn, nor dim nor dark")

Ebenezer Elliott (1781-1849)
18. British Rural Cottages in 1842
19. Will It Rain?
20. "Not die? Who saith that Nature cannot die?"

Leigh Hunt (1784-1859)
21. The Fish, the Man, and the Spirit
22. Rondeau ("Jenny kiss'd me when we met")

Bryan Waller Procter (1787-1874)
23. The Sexes

John Clare (1793-1864)
24. The Gipsy Camp
25. "The red bagged bee on never weary wing"
26. "The thunder mutters louder and more loud"
27. "Look through the naked bramble and black thorn"
28. "I am - yet what I am, none cares or knows"
29. An Invite to Eternity
30. The Shepherd Boy

Henry Francis Lyte (1793-1847)
31. Abide with Me

Hartley Coleridge (1796-1849)
32. "Think upon Death, 'tis good to think of Death"
33. The Larch Grove

James Henry (1798-1876)
34. "Breathe not a murmur thou of querulous"
35. Man's Universal Hymn
36. "The human skull is of deceit"
37. "The son's a poor, wretched, unfortunate creature"

William Thom (?1798-1848)
38. Whisperings for the Unwashed

Thomas Hood (1799-1845)
39. The Song of the Shirt

Mary Howitt (1799-1888)
40. The Dor-Hawk

Sir Henry Taylor (1800-1886)
41. To the Author's Wife

William Barnes (1801-86)
42. Evenen in the Village
43. To Me

Richard Hill Sandys (1801-92)
44. The Schoolboy at Home

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802-38)
45. Gossipping
46. The Marriage Vow
47. The Power of Words

Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803-49)
48. Dream-Pedlary
49. A Night-Scene
50. The Phantom-Wooer
51. Song on the Water
52. The Slight and Degenerate Nature of Man

Robert Stephen Hawker (1803-75)
53. The Cornish Emigrant's Song

James Clarence Mangan (1803-49)
54. Siberia

Samuel Laman Blanchard (1804-45)
55. A Song of Contradictions

R. E. Egerton-Warburton (1804-91)
56. Past and Present

Charles Whitehead (1804-62)
57. "A type of human life this forest old"

George Outram (1805-56)
58. The Annuity

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-61)
59. Sonnets from the Portuguese
60. The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point
61. Mother and Poet
62. My Heart and I

Thomas Miller (1807-74)
63. The Ant-Lion

Charles Turner (1808-79)
64. A Brilliant Day
65. A Photograph on the Red Gold
66. Joy Came from Heaven
67. Wind on the Corn
68. Welsh Lucy

Edward Fitzgerald (1809-83)
69. Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

Thomas Gordon Hake (1809-95)
70. Unrest

John Hanmer (1809-91)
71. To an Eagle
72. Poetry by the Way-Side

Alfred Tennyson (1809-92)
73. The Lady of Shalott
74. "Break, break, break"
75. Ulysses
76. Tithonus
77. Audley Court
78. Morte d'Arthur
79. The Eagle

Songs from The Princess:
80. "Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean"
81. "Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white"
82. from In Memoriam
83. The Charge of the Light Brigade
84. from Maud
85. In the Valley of Cauteretz
86. The Voyage of Maeldune
87. Crossing the Bar

Alfred Domett (1811-87)
88. Invisible Sights

William Bell Scott (1811-90)
89. The Witch's Ballad
90. Silence

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-63)
91. The Three Sailors

Robert Browning (1812-89)
92. My Last Duchess
93. Waring
94. The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church
95. Home-Thoughts, from Abroad
96. The Lost Leader
97. Fra Lippo Lippi
98. A Toccata of Galuppi's
99. "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came"
100. Andrea del Sarto
101. A Grammarian's Funeral
102. Two in the Campagna
103. Youth and Art
104. Caliban upon Setebos
105. Never the Time and the Place
106. Pan and Luna
107. Spring Song
108. Prologue (to Asolando)
109. Dubiety
110. Speculative

Eliza Cook (1812-89)
111. On Seeing a Bird-Catcher

Edward Lear (1812-88)
112. "There was an Old Man with a beard"
113. "There was an Old Man in a tree"
114. "There was a Young Lady of Tyre"
115. "There was an Old Man who said, 'Hush'!"
116. "There was an Old Man of Cape Horn"
117. "There was an Old Person of Cromer"
118. "There was an Old Person of Troy"
119. "There was an Old Person of Tring"
120. "Tehre was an Old Man on some rocks"
121. The Owl and the Pussy-Cat
122. The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo

W. E. Aytoun (1813-65)
123. La Mort D'Arthur

Charlotte Brontë (1816-55)
124. Diving
125. On the Death of Emily Jane Brontë

Shirley Brooks (1816-74)
126. The Mud-Fish

Emily Brontë (1818-48)
127. Remembrance
128. "High waving heather 'neath stormy blasts bending"
129. "The night is darkening round me"
130. "I'm happiest when most away"
131. "How still, how happy! those are words"
132. "Upon her soothing breast"
133. "No coward soul is mine"

Emily Brontë or Charlotte Brontë
134. "Often rebuked, yet always back returning"

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-61)
135. Amours de Voyage

George Eliot (1819-80)
136. Brother and Sister

Ernest Jones (1819-68)
137. The Factory Town

Charles Kingsley (1819-75)
138. The Poetry of a Root Crop
139. Airly Beacon
140. A Lament
141. The Last Buccaneer

Anne Brontë (1820-49)
142. Song ("We know where deepest lies the snow")

Anne Evans (1820-70)
143. Over!

Jean Ingelow (1820-97)
144. "Wake, baillie, wake! the crafts are out"
145. Loss and Waste

Ebenezer Jones (1820-60)
146. High Summer
147. The Poet's Death

Menella Bute Smedley (1820-77)
148. A Bird's-Eye View

Dora Greenwell (1821-82)
149. A Scherzo
150. A Valentine

Frederick Locker-Lampson (1821-95)
151. Beggars

Matthew Arnold (1822-88)
152. The Sick King in Bokhara
153. To Marguerite - Continued
154. Resignation
155. Dover Beach
156. Lines Written in Kensington Gardens
157. Revolutions
158. Philomela
159. Rugby Chapel
160. Growing Old

Robert Leighton (1822-69)
161. The Bunch of Larks

Eliza Ogilvy (1822-1912)
162. A Nightmare

William Johnson Cory (1823-92)
163. [Heraclitus]

Coventry Patmore (1823-96)
164. The Wife's Tragedy
165. Departure
166. The Toys
167. Magna Est Veritas
168. A London Fete

William Brighty Rands (1823-82)
169. Lilliput Levee

William Caldwell Roscoe (1823-59)
170. By the Seashore

William Allingham (1824-89)
171. "By and by, we shall meet"
172. Writing
173. In Snow
174. The Fairy King
175. "Everything passes and vanishes"

Sydney Thompson Dobell (1824-74)
176. The Wounded
177. The Botanist's Vision

Walter C. Smith (1824-1908)
178. Found and Lost

Adelaide Anne Proctor (1825-64)
179. Envy

Henry Septimus Sutton (1825-1901)
180. Man
181. Who Shall Deliver?
182. A Love-Letter

Mortimer Collins (1827-76)
183. Hartley Coleridge

Emily Pfeiffer (1827-90)
184. Triolet

Elizabeth Charles (1828-96)
From The Unnamed Women
185. I ("The hand that might have drawn aside")

George Meredith (1828-1909)
186. Modern Love

Arthur Munby (1828-1910)
187. The Serving Maid

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-82)
188. The Blessed Damozel
189. Nuptial Sleep
190. A Superscription
191. He and I

Alexander Smith (1829-67)
192. Glasgow

T. E. Brown (1830-97)
193. A Sermon at Clevedon

Sebastian Evans (1830-1909)
194. What the Trumpeter Said

Christina G. Rossetti (1830-94)
195. Goblin Market
196. Monna Innominata
197. An Old-World Thicket
198. Forget Me Not
199. Spring Quiet
200. Song ("When I am dead, my dearest")
201. Song ("Oh roses for the flush of youth")
202. Remember
203. From the Antique
204. "These All Wait Upon Thee"
205. A Wish
206. May
207. In an Artist's Studio
208. Fata Morgana
209. Introspective
210. In the Round Tower at Jhansi, June 8, 1857
211. A Birthday
212. Winter: My Secret
213. "The Heart Knoweth Its Own Bitterness"
214. Up-Hill
215. Song ("Two doves upon the selfsame branch")
216. A Dirge
217. An "Immurata" Sister
218. A Christmas Carol
219. from Sing-Song
220. My Mouse
221. "Summer Is Ended"
222. Pastime
223. A Frog's Fate

*Anonymous
224. Johnny Sands
225. The Way to Live

C. S. Calverley (1831-84)
226. Peace

Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton (1831-91)
227. Seaward

Lewis Carroll (1832-98)
228. Jabberwocky
229. The Walrus and the Carpenter

Joseph Skipsey (1832-1903)
230. "Get Up!"
231. The Stars Are Twinkling
232. Mother Wept
233. A Golden Lot

Richard Watson Dixon (1833-1900)
234. Dream
235. The Mystery of the Body
236. Song ("The feathers of the willow")

William Morris (1834-96)
237. The Haystack in the Floods
238. Echoes of Love's House
239. Pomona

James Thomson (1834-82)
240. The City of Dreadful Night

Alfred Austin (1835-1913)
241. "Give me October's meditative haze"

Sir Alfred Comyns Lyall (1835-1911)
242. Badminton

John Leicester Warren, Lord de Tabley (1835-95)
243. On a Portrait of Sir John Suckling
244. The Study of a Spider
245. The Knight in the Wood
246. The Pilgrim Cranes
247. Lines to a Lady-Bird

Frances Ridley Havergal (1836-79)
248. Under the Surface

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909)
249. A Match
250. A Cameo
251. The Sundew
252. The Garden of Proserpine
253. Love and Sleep
254. Ilicet
255. A Rhyme

Augusta Webster (1837-94)
256. Mother and Daughter

David Gray (1838-61)
257. The Brooklet

John Todhunter (1839-1916)
258. Rain

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
259. Friends Beyond
260. Neutral Tones
261. Her Dilemma
262. "I look into my glass"
263. The Dream Drummer [Drummer Hodge]
264. In the Old Theatre, Fiesole
265. Rome: At the Pyramid of Cestius near the Graves of Shelley and Keats
266. Lausanne: In Gibbon's Old Garden: 11-12 p.m.
267. An August Midnight
268. The Darkling Thrush
269. The Ruined Maid
270. The Respectable Burgher
271. The Self-Unseeing
272. De Profundis I [In Tenebris I]

Harriet Eleanor Hamilton King (1840-1920)
273. A Dream Maiden

Cosmo Monkhouse (1840-1901)
274. A Ballad of a Shield

Mathilde Blind (1841-96)
275. On Reading the "Rubáiyat" of Omar Khayyam

George Augustus Simcox (1841-1905)
276. In the Jacquerie

Edward Dowden (1843-1913)
277. The Pool

Mary Montgomerie Lamb (1843-1905)
278. "For One Man's Pleasure"

Robert Bridges (1844-1930)
279. On a Dead Child

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89)
280. Heaven-Haven
281. Spring and Fall
282. The Windhover
283. Pied Beauty
284. Spelt from Sibyl's Leaves
285. "As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame"
286. That Nature Is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection
287. "No worst, there is none"
288. "Repeat that, repeat"
289. "It was a hard thing to undo this knot"

Caroline, Lady Lindsay (1844-1912)
290. Of a Bird-Cage

Alexander Anderson (1845-1909)
291. Railway Dreamings

L. S. Bevinton (1845-95)
292. "Egoisme à Deux"
293. One More Bruised Heart!

William Canton (1845-1926)
294. The Haunted Bridge
295. The Crow

Eugene Lee-Hamilton (1845-1907)
296. A Snails' Derby

"Michael Field" (Katherine Harris Bradley, 1846-1914, and Edith Emma Cooper, 1862-1913)
297. L'Indifferent
298. "A curling thread"
299. Cyclamens
300. Irises
301. "It was deep April, and the morn"

James Logie Robertson (1846-1922)
302. The White Winter - Hughie Snawed Up
303. A Back-Lying Farm

Alice Meynell (1847-1922)
304. The Modern Mother
305. A Dead Harvest
306. Parentage
307. Renouncement
308. Cradle-Song at Twilight

Digby Mackworth Dolben (1848-67)
309. Sister Death

W. E. Henley (1849-1903)
From In Hospital
310. Waiting
311. Interior
312. Music
313. Discharged

314. Back-View
315. To W. R.
316. "On the way to Kew"

William Larminie (1849-1900)
317. The Nameless Doon

Philip Bourke Marston (1850-87)
318. Speechless
319. Grief's Aspects
320. After

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94)
321. The Light-Keeper
322. "Love - what is love? A great and aching heart"
From A Child's Garden of Verses
323. Bed in Summer
324. At the Seaside
325. Whole Duty of Children
326. Rain
327. Singing
328. The Land of Nod

* "Caerleon" (fl. 1876- ?)
329. "Aeschylus Homer and Shakespeare, souls"

F. B. Money-coutts (1852-1923)
330. The Commonest Lot Epitaphs
331. A Fair Woman
332. An Infant

William Renton (1852-? [after 1905])
333. The Foal
334. Peat Cutting
335. The Fork of the Road
336. Spring Floods

* May Probyn (fl. 1878- ?)
337. A Mésalliance

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
338. Les Ballons
339. Symphony in Yellow
340. The Harlot's House

*James Chapman Woods (fl. 1879-1931)
341. Fate

Jane Barlow (1857-1917)
342. Honey-Harvest

John Davidson (1857-1909)
343. Thirty Bob a Week
344. A Labourer's Wife
345. New Year's Day

A. Mary F. Robinson (1857-1944)
346. Neurasthenia
347. Twilight

Constance Naden (1858-89)
348. Christ, The Nazarene

Edith Nesbit (1858-1924)
349. On Dit

Dollie Radford (1858-1920)
350. From the Suburbs

Sir William Watson (1858-1935)
351. The Play of "King Lear"
352. Byron the Voluptuary
353. The Metropolitan Underground Railway

A. E. Housman (1859-1936)
354. "Loveliest of trees, the cherry now"
355. "When I was one-and-twenty"
356. "It nods and curtseys and recovers"
357. "Others, I am not the first"
358. "Into my heart an air that kills"
359. "Far in a western brookland"
360. "I hoed and trenched and weeded"

J. K. Stephen (1859-92)
361. Poetic Lamentation on the Insufficiency of Steam Locomotion in the Lake District
362. England and America

Francis Thompson (1859-1907)
363. At Lord's
364. The End of It
365. Daphne

Rosamund Marriott Watson (1860-1911)
366. Aubade

Mary E. Coleridge (1861-1907)
367. Winged Words
368. L'Oiseau Bleu
369. Marriage
370. "Night is fallen within, without"
371. The White Women

May Kendall (1861-1943)
372. Lay of the Trilobite

Amy Levy (1861-89)
373. Epitaph (on a Commonplace Person Who Died in Bed)

A. C. Benson (1862-1925)
374. Thomas Gray
375. The Ant-Heap

Sir Henry Newbolt (1862-1938)
376. Gillespie

Robert Fuller Murray (1863-94)
377. A Ballad of Refreshment
378.

Victor Plarr (1863-1929)
379. The Solitaries
380. The Imperial Prayers
381. On Change of Opinions
382. Twilight-Piece
383. Epitaphium Citharistriae
384. Shadows
385. At Citoyenne Tussaud's

Stephen Phillips (1864-1915)
386. "O thou art put to many uses, sweet!"

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
387. Danny Deever
388. Tommy
389. The Widow at Windsor
390. Mandalay

W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)
391. An Old Song Re-Sung [Down by the Salley Gardens]
392. The Lake Isle of Innisfree
393. The Sorrow of Love
394. Breasal the Fisherman [The Fish]
395. The Song of Wandering Aengus
396. Aedh Laments the Loss of Love [The Lover Mourns for the Loss of Love]
397. The Valley of the Black Pig
398. Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven [He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven]
399. The Fiddler of Dooney

Arthur Symons (1865-1945)
400. The Absinthe Drinker

John Gray (1866-1934)
401. Song of the Seedling
402. The Vines
403. Spleen

Ernest Dowson (1867-1900)
404. Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam
405. Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae
406. Spleen
407. To William Theodore Peters on His Renaissance Cloak

Lionel Johnson (1867-1902)
408. By the Statue of King Charles at Charing Cross
409. The Dark Angel
410. Love's Ways

George William Russell (1867-1935)
411. The Mid-World

Laurence Binyon (1869-1943)
412. As I Walked Through London

Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953)
413. The Dodo
414. The Marmozet
415. The Camelopard
416. The Llama

Biographical and Textual Notes Subject Index Index of Proper Names Index of Poets Index of Titles Index of First Lines Permissions