Masters of British Literature, Volume A (Penguin Academics Series) Book

THE MIDDLE AGES

BEFORE THE NORMAN CONQUEST

BEOWULF

Response

John Gardner, from Grendel

EARLY ENGLISH NARRATIVE

The Labour Pains of the Ulaid

The Birth of Cú Chulainn

The Naming of Cú Chulainn

EARLY ENGLISH VERSE

To Crinog

Pangur the Cat

Writing in the Wood

The Viking Terror

The Old Woman of Beare

Findabair Remembers Fróech

A Grave Marked with Ogam

from The Voyage of Máel Dúin

THE DREAM OF THE ROOD

THE WANDERER

WULF AND EADWACER and WIFE'S LAMENT

RIDDLES

Three Anglo-Latin Riddles by Aldhelm

Five Old English Riddles

Arthurian Romance

MARIE DE FRANCE

from Lais

Prologue

Lanval

Chevrefoil (The Honeysuckle)

SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT

(Translated by J.R.R. Tolkien)

SIR THOMAS MALORY

Morte Darthur

from Caxton’s Prologue

The Miracle of Galahad

GEOFFREY CHAUCER

The Canterbury Tales

The General Prologue (Middle English and modern translation)

The Miller’s Tale

The Introduction

The Tale

The Wife of Bath’s Prologue

The Wife of Bath’s Tale

The Nun’s Priest’s Tale

The Parson’s Tale

The Introduction

[The Remedy for the Sin of Lechery]

Chaucer’s Retraction

To His Scribe Adam

Complaint to His Purse

WILLIAM LANGLAND

Piers Plowman

Prologue

Passus 2

from Passus 6

Passus 8

“PIERS PLOWMAN” AND ITS TIME

The Rising of 1381

Three Poems on the Rising of 1381: John Ball’s First Letter • John Ball’s Second Letter • The Course of Revolt • John Gower: from The Voice of One Crying

Medieval Biblical Drama

THE SECOND PLAY OF THE SHEPHERDS

VERNACULAR RELIGION

The Wycliffite Bible

John 10.11–18

from A Wycliffite Sermon on John 10.11–18

MARGERY KEMPE

The Book of Margery Kempe

The Preface

[Meeting with Bishop of Lincoln and Archbishop of Canterbury]

[Visit with Julian of Norwich]

MIDDLE ENGLISH LYRICS

The Cuckoo Song (“Sumer is icumen in”)

Alisoun (“Bitwene Mersh and Averil”)

I Have a Noble Cock

Abuse of Women (“In every place ye may well see”)

Adam Lay Ibounden

I Sing of a Maiden

In Praise of Mary (“Edi be thu, Hevene Quene”)

Mary Is with Child (“Under a tree”)

Jesus, My Sweet Lover (“Jesu Christ, my lemmon swete”)

Contempt of the World (“Where beth they biforen us weren?”)

WILLIAM DUNBAR

Lament for the Makars

Done Is a Battell

In Secreit Place This Hyndir Nycht

CHRISTINE DE PIZAN

from Book of the City of Ladies

(trans. by Earl Jeffrey Richards)

THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD

JOHN SKELTON

Womanhod, Wanton

Lullay

Knolege, Aquayntance

Manerly Margery Mylk and Ale

Garland of Laurel

To Maystres Jane Blennerhasset

To Maystres Isabell Pennell

To Maystres Margaret Hussey

SIR THOMAS WYATT

The Long Love, That in My Thought Doth Harbor

Companion Reading

Petrarch: Sonnet 140

Whoso List to Hunt

Companion Reading

Petrarch: Sonnet 190

My Galley

They Flee from Me

Some Time I Fled the Fire

My Lute, Awake!

Tagus, Farewell

Forget Not Yet

Blame Not My Lute

Lucks, My Fair Falcon, and Your Fellows All

Stand Whoso List

Mine Own John Poyns

HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY

Love That Doth Reign and Live within My Thought

Th’Assyrians’ King, in Peace with Foul Desire

Set Me Whereas the Sun Doth Parch the Green

The Soote Season

Alas, So All Things Now Do Hold Their Peace

Companion Reading

Petrarch: Sonnet 164

So Cruel Prison

London, Hast Thou Accused Me

Wyatt Resteth Here

My Radcliffe, When Thy Reckless Youth Offends

EDMUND SPENSER

The Faerie Queene

A Letter of the Authors

The First Booke of the Faerie Queene

Amoretti

1 (“Happy ye leaves when as those lilly hands”)

4 (“New yeare forth looking out of Janus gate”)

13 (“In that proud port, which her so goodly graceth”)

22 (“This holy season fit to fast and pray”)

62 (“The weary yeare his race now having run”)

65 (“The doubt which ye misdeeme, fayre love, is vaine”)

66 (“To all those happy blessings which ye have”)

68 (“Most glorious Lord of lyfe that on this day”)

75 (“One day I wrote her name upon the strand”)

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY

The Apology for Poetry

Astrophil and Stella

1 (“Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show”)

3 (“Let dainty wits cry on the sisters nine”)

7 (“When Nature made her chief work, Stella’s eyes”)

24 (“Rich fool there be whose base and filthy heart”)

31 (“With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb’st the skies”)

45 (“Stella oft sees the very face of woe”)

52 (“A strife is grown between Virtue and Love”)

60 (“When my good Angel guides me to the place”)

63 (“O grammar-rules, O now your virtues show”)

68 (“Stella, the only planet of my light”)

71 (“Who will in fairest book of Nature know”)

Second song (“Have I caught my heavenly jewel”)

74 (“I never drank of Aganippe well”)

89 (“Now that, of absence, the most irksome night”)

90 (“Stella, think not that I by verse seek fame”)

104 (“Envious wits, what hath been mine offense”)

106 (“O absent presence, Stella is not here”)

107 (“Stella, since thou so right a princess art”)

108 (“When sorrow (using mine own fire’s might)”)

ISABELLA WHITNEY

The Admonition by the Author

A Careful Complaint by the Unfortunate Author

MARY HERBERT, COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE

Even Now That Care

To Thee Pure Sprite

Psalm 71: In Te Domini Speravi (“On thee my trust is grounded”)

Companion Reading

Miles Coverdale: Psalm 71

Psalm 121: Levavi Oculos (“Unto the hills, I now will bend”)

The Doleful Lay of Clorinda

ELIZABETH I

Written with a Diamond on Her Window at Woodstock

Written on a Wall at Woodstock

The Doubt of Future Foes

On Monsieur’s Departure

Speeches

On Marriage

On Mary, Queen of Scots

On Mary’s Execution

To the English Troops at Tilbury, Facing the Spanish Armada

The Golden Speech

AEMILIA LANYER

The Description of Cookham

Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum

To the Doubtful Reader

To the Virtuous Reader

[Invocation]

[Against Beauty Without Virtue]

[Pilate's Wife Apologizes for Eve]

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

Response

Sir Walter Raleigh: The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd

The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus

SIR WALTER RALEIGH

Nature That Washed Her Hands in Milk

To the Queen

On the Life of Man

The Author’s Epitaph, Made by Himself

As You Came from the Holy Land

The Discovery of the Large, Rich and Beautiful Empire of Guiana

from Epistle Dedicatory

To the Reader

[The Amazons]

[The Orinoco]

[The King of Aromaia]

[The New World of Guiana]

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Sonnets

1 (“From fairest creatures we desire increase”)

18 (“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day”)

20 (“A woman’s face with Nature’s own hand painted”)

29 (“When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes”)

30 (“When to the sessions of sweet silent thought”)

33 (“Full many a glorious morning have I seen”)

55 (“Not marble nor the gilded monuments”)

60 (“Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore”)

71 (“No longer mourn for me when I am dead”)

73 (“That time of year thou mayst in me behold”)

87 (“Farewell! Thou art too dear for my possessing”)

94 (“They that have pow’r to hurt, and will do none”)

104 (“To me, fair friend, you never can be old”)

116 (“Let me not to the marriage of true minds”)

126 (“O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power”)

129 (“The expense of spirit in a waste of shame”)

130 (“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”)

138 (“When my love swears that she is made of truth”)

144 (“Two loves I have, of comfort and despair”)

152 (“In loving thee thou know’st I am forsworn”)

The Tempest

Response

Aime Cesaire: from A Tempest

PERSPECTIVES

Tracts on Women and Gender

Desiderius Erasmus

from In Laude and Praise of Matrimony

Barnabe Riche

from My Lady’s Looking Glass

Margaret Tyler

from Preface to The First Part of the Mirror of Princely Deeds

Joseph Swetnam

from The Arraignment of Lewd, Idle, Froward, and Unconstant Women

Rachel Speght

from A Muzzle for Melastomus

Ester Sowernam

from Ester Hath Hanged Haman

Hic Mulier and Haec-Vir

from Hic Mulier; or, The Man-Woman

from Haec-Vir; or, The Womanish-Man

THOMAS CAMPION

My sweetest Lesbia, let us live and love

There is a garden in her face

Rose-cheeked Laura, come

When thou must home to shades of underground

Never weather-beaten sail more willing bent to shore

BEN JONSON

On Something, That Walks Somewhere

On My First Daughter

To John Donne

On My First Son

Inviting a Friend to Supper

To Penshurst

Song to Celia

Queen and Huntress

To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare, and What He Hath Left Us

JOHN DONNE

The Good Morrow

Song (“Go, and catch a falling star”)

The Sun Rising

The Canonization

A Valediction: of Weeping

Love’s Alchemy

The Flea

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

The Ecstasy

The Funeral

The Relic

Elegy 19: To His Mistress Going to Bed

Holy Sonnets

1 (“As due by many titles I resign”)

2 (“Oh my black soul! Now thou art summoned”)

3 (“This is my play’s last scene, here heavens appoint”)

4 (“At the round earth’s imagined corners, blow”)

5 (“If poisonous minerals, and if that tree”)

6 (“Death be not proud, though some have called thee”)

10 (“Batter my heart, three-personed God; for, you”)

Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions

[“For whom the bell tolls”]

LADY MARY WORTH

Pamphilia to Amphilanthus

1 (“When night’s black mantle could most darkness prove”)

5 (“Can pleasing sight misfortune ever bring?”)

16 (“Am I thus conquered? Have I lost the powers”)

55 (“How like a fire does love increase in me”)

68 (“My pain, still smothered in my grièved breast”)

from The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania

ROBERT HERRICK

Hesperides

The Argument of His Book

To His Book

Corinna’s Going A-Maying

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

His Prayer to Ben Jonson

Upon Julia’s Clothes

The Christian Militant

To His Tomb-Maker

Upon Himself Being Buried

His Last Request to Julia

GEORGE HERBERT

The Altar

Redemption

Easter

Easter Wings

Man

Jordan (2)

Time

The Collar

The Pulley

The Forerunners

Love (3)

ANDREW MARVELL

The Coronet

Bermudas

To His Coy Mistress

The Definition of Love

An Horatian Ode Upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland

KATHERINE PHILIPS

Friendship in Emblem, or the Seal

Upon the Double Murder of King Charles

On the Third of September, 1651

To the Truly Noble, and Obliging Mrs. Anne Owen

To Mrs. Mary Awbrey at Parting

To My Excellent Lucasia, on Our Friendship

JOHN MILTON

Lycidas

How Soon Hath Time

On the New Forcers of Conscience Under the Long Parliament

To the Lord General Cromwell

On the Late Massacre in Piedmont

When I Consider How My Light Is Spent

Methought I Saw My Late Espoused Saint

Paradise Lost

Book 1

Book 2

Book 9

Book 12

THE RESTORATION and the EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

SAMUEL PEPYS

from The Diary

[First Entries]

[The Coronation of Charles II]

[The Fire of London]

MARGARET CAVENDISH, DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE

POEMS AND FANCIES

The Poetress’s Hasty Resolution

The Poetress’s Petition

An Apology for Writing So Much upon This Book

from The Description of a New Blazing World

from To the Reader

[Creating Worlds]

[Empress, Duchess, Duke]

Epilogue

JOHN DRYDEN

Mac Flecknoe

To the Memory of Mr. Oldham

Alexander’s Feast

APGRA BEHN

The Disappointment

To Lysander, on Some Verses He Writ

To Lysander at the Music-Meeting

A Letter to Mr. Creech at Oxford

To the Fair Clarinda, Who Made Love to Me, Imagined More than Woman

JOHN WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER

Against Constancy

The Disabled Debauchee

Song (“Love a woman? You’re an ass!”)

The Imperfect Enjoyment

Upon Nothing

A Satyr Against Reason and Mankind

WILLIAM WYCHERLEY

The Country Wife

DANIEL DEFOE

A Journal of the Plague Year

[At the Burial Pit]

[Encounter with a Waterman]

Perspectives

Reading Papers

News and Comment

from Mercurius Publicus [Anniversary of the Regicide]

from The London Gazette [The Fire of London]

from The Daily Courant No. 1 [Editorial Policy]

Daniel Defoe: from A Review of the State of the British Nation, Vol. 4, No. 21 [The New Union]

from The Craftsman No. 307 [Vampires in Britain]

Periodical Personae

Richard Steele: from Tatler No. 1 [Introducing Mr. Bickerstaff]

Joseph Addison: from Spectator No. 1 [Introducing Mr. Spectator]

from Female Spectator, Vol. 1, No. 1 [The Author’s Intent]

Richard Steele: from Tatler No. 18 [The News Writers in Danger]

Joseph Addison: from Tatler No. 155 [The Political Upholsterer]

Joseph Addison: from Spectator No. 10 [The Spectator and Its Readers]

Getting, Spending, Speculating

Joseph Addison: Spectator No. 69 [Royal Exchange]

Richard Steele: Spectator No. 11 [Inkle and Yarico]

Daniel Defoe: from A Review of the State of the British Nation, Vol. 1, No. 43 [Weak Foundations]

Advertisements from the Spectator

Women and Men, Manners and Marriage

Richard Steele: from Tatler No. 25 [Duellists]

Daniel Defoe: from A Review of the State of the British Nation, Vol. 9, No. 34 [A Duellist’s Conscience]

from The Athenian Mercury

Richard Steele: from Tatler No. 104 [Jenny Distaff Newly Married]

Joseph Addison: Spectator No. 128 [Variety of Temper]

Eliza Haywood: from The Female Spectator, Vol. 1, No. 1 [Seomanthe’s Elopement]

Eliza Haywood: from The Female Spectator, Vol. 2, No. 10 [Women’s Education]

JONATHAN SWIFT

A Description of the Morning

A Description of a City Shower

Stella’s Birthday, 1719

Stella’s Birthday, 1727

The Lady’s Dressing Room

Response

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: The Reasons that induced Dr. S. to write a Poem called The Lady’s Dressing Room

Gulliver’s Travels

from Part 3. A Voyage to Laputa

Part 4. A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms

A Modest Proposal

“A Modest Proposal” and Its Time

William Petty from Political Arithmetic

ALEXANDER POPE

An Essay on Criticism

The Rape of the Lock

The Iliad

from Preface [On Translation]

from Book 12 [Sarpedon’s Speech]

from An Essay on Man

Epistle 1

To the Reader

The Design

Argument

from The Dunciad

from Book the Fourth

[The Goddess Coming in Her Majesty]

[The Geniuses of the Schools]

[Young Gentlemen Returned from Travel]

LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU

from The Turkish Embassy Letters

To Lady—[On the Turkish Baths]

To Lady Mar [On Turkish Dress]

Letter to Lady Bute [On Her Granddaughter]

Epistle from Mrs. Yonge to Her Husband

The Lover: A Ballad

JOHN GAY

The Beggar’s Opera

JAMES THOMSON

from The Seasons

from Autumn

Rule, Britannia

THOMAS GRAY

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

SAMUEL JOHNSON

The Vanity of Human Wishes

THE RAMBLER

No. 4 [On Fiction]

No. 5 [On Spring]

THE IDLER

No. 31 [On Idleness]

No. 84 [On Autobiography]

JAMES BOSWELL

from London Journal

[A Scot in London]

[First Meeting with Johnson]

from The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.

[Introduction; Boswell’s Method]

[Dinner with Wilkes]

OLIVER GOLDSMITH

The Deserted Village

ELIZA HAYWOOD

Fantomina: Or, Love in a Maze

Credits

Index