The Best Short Poems of the Nineteenth Century: Being the Twenty-five Best Short Poems as Selected by Ballot be Competent CriticsF.H. Revell, 1903 - 52 pages |
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ABOU BEN ADHEM Alfred angel Art thou bar be moaning Best Short Poems Blessed Blow BREAK BUGLE SONG canst CHAMBERED NAUTILUS Charles Kingsley clasp cold CONCORD FIGHT Copyright CROSSING THE BAR DAFFODILS dancing dark deep Diamonds to fasten dost dragon-fly Dream dying Elizabeth Barrett Browning face Forever Francis William Bourdillon Hath heart Heaven heroes Houghton Hymn IDLE TEARS ISRAFEL John Henry Newman John Keats Joseph Blanco White Julia Ward KINDLY LIGHT Kiss Lead Thou lilies look'd Lord Tennyson lov'd lyre Mifflin never come back Never was lady NINETEENTH CENTURY o'er Oliver Wendell pass'd Percy Bysshe Shelley PHANTOM OF DELIGHT pipes poets purple Ralph Waldo reed river Robert Browning ship of pearl sing so wildly Skylark Sleep Sonnet soul Spirit Star stood supplementary list sweet swift thine THOMAS thou art thought turbidly WATERFOWL weary wild echoes flying William Cullen William Wordsworth women must weep
Popular passages
Page 20 - She was a Phantom of delight When first she gleamed upon my sight: A lovely Apparition, sent To be a moment's ornament; Her eyes as stars of twilight fair; Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair; But all things else about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful Dawn; A dancing Shape, an Image gay, To haunt, to startle, and way-lay.
Page 21 - This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not. — Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
Page 25 - Whither, midst falling dew, While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way?
Page 40 - By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world. The foe long since in silence slept; Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; And Time the ruined bridge has swept Down the dark stream which seaward creeps. On this green bank, by this soft stream, We set today a votive stone; That memory may their deed redeem, When, like our sires, our sons are gone. Spirit, that made those heroes dare To die,...
Page 18 - 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-fringed legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady ? What men or gods are these?
Page 34 - Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone, And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him ; But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on In the grave where a Briton has laid him ! But half of our heavy task was done When the clock struck the hour for retiring, And we heard the distant and random gun That the foe was sullenly firing.
Page 31 - ... Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, That brings our friends up from the underworld, Sad as the last which reddens over one That sinks with all we love below the verge; So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.
Page 42 - SWIFTLY walk over the western wave, Spirit of Night ! Out of the misty eastern cave, Where all the long and lone daylight Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear, Which make thee terrible and dear, — Swift be thy flight...
Page 10 - Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!
Page 15 - Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a riband to stick in his coat — Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us, Lost all the others, she lets us devote ; They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver, So much was theirs who so little allowed : How all our copper had gone for his service ! Rags — were they purple, his heart had been proud ! We that had loved him so, followed him...