William Wordsworth defined good poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” and no generation of poets has felt more powerfully than the Romantics of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In this indispensable volume, Sir Jonathan Bate—prizewinning biographer of Wordsworth, Keats and John Clare—brings together the most loved poems of the age, together with many forgotten gems. Alongside classics such as Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” and “Frost at Midnight”, the immortal odes of Keats, and generous selections from Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads and The Prelude, the reader will rediscover the wit of Byron, the wildness of Blake, the passion of Shelley, a wealth of nature poems by Clare, and the distinctive voices of women Romantics such as Charlotte Smith, Mary Robinson, Felicia Hemans, Dorothy Wordsworth, and Letitia Elizabeth Landon. 

Includes poems generations have learned to cherish, such as:

• “The Tyger" by William Blake
• “She Walks in Beauty Like the Night" by Lord Byron
• “Surprised by Joy" by William Wordsworth
• “Ode on a Grecian Urn" by John Keats
• “Frost at Midnight” by Samuel Taylor Colerdige
• "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley
• “The Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
CHILDHOOD
JOHN CLARE     Childhood
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH There was a boy
JOHN CLARE     Evening Schoolboys
WILLIAM BLAKE         Song of Experience: The chimney sweeper
WILLIAM BLAKE         Song of Innocence: Infant Joy
WILLIAM BLAKE         Song of Experience: Infant Sorrow
WILLIAM BLAKE         Song of Innocence: Holy Thursday
WILLIAM BLAKE         Song of Experience: Holy Thursday
MARY ROBINSON     The savage of Aveyron
FELICIA HEMANS       Casabianca
 
MEMORY
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE  To the River Otter
WILLIAM COWPER    from The Task: Winter’s Evening
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE Frost at midnight
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey
HELEN MARIA WILLIAMS  from A Farewell, for two years, to England
JOHN CLARE     Remembrances
JOHN CLARE     The flitting
JOANNA BAILLIE        To Mrs Siddons
 
INFLUENCE OF NATURAL OBJECTS
CHARLOTTE SMITH  Written at the close of spring
ROBERT BURNS        To a mountain-daisy
WILLIAM BLAKE         Ah! sunflower
HELEN MARIA WILLIAMS  Sonnet to the strawberry
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Influence of natural objects
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE  This lime-tree bower my prison
PERCY SHELLEY        Mont Blanc
DOROTHY WORDSWORTH      Floating island
ROBERT SOUTHEY   The cataract of Lodore
LETITIA LANDON      Airey Force
CHARLOTTE SMITH  from Beachy Head
JOHN CLARE     The pettichap’s nest
JOHN CLARE     Pewit’s nest
JOHN CLARE     The skylark
PERCY SHELLEY        To a skylark
LEIGH HUNT     To the grasshopper and the cricket
JOHN KEATS      On the grasshopper and cricket
JOHN KEATS      To Autumn
JOHN CLARE     from The Shepherd’s Calendar: October
PERCY SHELLEY        Ode to the west wind
JOHN CLARE     Emmonsails heath in winter
JOHN CLARE     Snow Winter fields
LORD BYRON   from Childe Harold’s pilgrimage
FELICIA HEMANS       The rock of Cader Idris
JOHN KEATS      On the sea
WILLIAM BLAKE         The tyger
 
SOCIETY AND POLITICS
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Old man travelling
MARY ROBINSON     London’s summer morning
WILLIAM BLAKE         London
WILLIAM BLAKE         The garden of love
HANNAH MORE        from Slavery: A Poem
ROBERT SOUTHEY   Poems on the slave trade: sonnet VI
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH To Toussaint L’Ouverture
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH from The Prelude: Residence in France
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Jones! As from Calais southwards
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Composed by the sea-side, near Calais
PERCY SHELLEY        The mask of anarchy
PERCY SHELLEY        England in 1819
JOHN CLARE     The fallen elm
WILLIAM BLAKE         from Auguries of innocence
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH          Resolution and independence
WILLIAM BLAKE         Preface to Milton: And did those feet
 
LOVE
LORD BYRON   She walks in beauty like the night
JOHN KEATS      The eve of St Agnes
LORD BYRON   from Don Juan
LORD BYRON   So, we’ll go no more a’roving
THOMAS MOORE      Alone in crowds to wander on
JOHN CLARE     Song: True love lives in absence
LETITIA LANDON      Juliet after the masquerade
THOMAS CAMPBELL Freedom and love
 
JOURNEYS OF THE IMAGINATION
JOHN KEATS      On first looking into Chapman’s Homer
WILLIAM BLAKE         The crystal cabinet
JOHN KEATS      La belle dame sans merci
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE Kubla Khan
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
GEORGE CRABBE      from Peter Grimes
SIR WALTER SCOTT from Marmion: the arrival of Lochinvar

INTIMATIONS OF MORTALITY AND IMMORTALITY
JOHN KEATS      Ode to a nightingale
WILLIAM BLAKE         The sick rose
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH from Lyrical Ballads: three ‘Lucy’ songs
SAMUEL ROGERS      A wish
SIR WALTER SCOTT Proud Maisie
PERCY SHELLEY        Ozymandias
HORACE SMITH         On a stupendous leg of granite
JOHN KEATS      Ode on a Grecian urn
LORD BYRON   Darkness
JOHN KEATS      Bright star
PERCY SHELLEY        from Adonais
LORD BYRON   On this day I complete my thirty-sixth year
JOHN CLARE     Sonnet: I am
JOHN CLARE     Lines: I am
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Surprised by joy
FELICIA HEMANS       To Wordsworth
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Ode: Intimations of Immortality
JOHN CLARE     An invite to eternity
 
List of Poets

About

William Wordsworth defined good poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” and no generation of poets has felt more powerfully than the Romantics of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In this indispensable volume, Sir Jonathan Bate—prizewinning biographer of Wordsworth, Keats and John Clare—brings together the most loved poems of the age, together with many forgotten gems. Alongside classics such as Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” and “Frost at Midnight”, the immortal odes of Keats, and generous selections from Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads and The Prelude, the reader will rediscover the wit of Byron, the wildness of Blake, the passion of Shelley, a wealth of nature poems by Clare, and the distinctive voices of women Romantics such as Charlotte Smith, Mary Robinson, Felicia Hemans, Dorothy Wordsworth, and Letitia Elizabeth Landon. 

Includes poems generations have learned to cherish, such as:

• “The Tyger" by William Blake
• “She Walks in Beauty Like the Night" by Lord Byron
• “Surprised by Joy" by William Wordsworth
• “Ode on a Grecian Urn" by John Keats
• “Frost at Midnight” by Samuel Taylor Colerdige
• "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley
• “The Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Table of Contents

CHILDHOOD
JOHN CLARE     Childhood
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH There was a boy
JOHN CLARE     Evening Schoolboys
WILLIAM BLAKE         Song of Experience: The chimney sweeper
WILLIAM BLAKE         Song of Innocence: Infant Joy
WILLIAM BLAKE         Song of Experience: Infant Sorrow
WILLIAM BLAKE         Song of Innocence: Holy Thursday
WILLIAM BLAKE         Song of Experience: Holy Thursday
MARY ROBINSON     The savage of Aveyron
FELICIA HEMANS       Casabianca
 
MEMORY
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE  To the River Otter
WILLIAM COWPER    from The Task: Winter’s Evening
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE Frost at midnight
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey
HELEN MARIA WILLIAMS  from A Farewell, for two years, to England
JOHN CLARE     Remembrances
JOHN CLARE     The flitting
JOANNA BAILLIE        To Mrs Siddons
 
INFLUENCE OF NATURAL OBJECTS
CHARLOTTE SMITH  Written at the close of spring
ROBERT BURNS        To a mountain-daisy
WILLIAM BLAKE         Ah! sunflower
HELEN MARIA WILLIAMS  Sonnet to the strawberry
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Influence of natural objects
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE  This lime-tree bower my prison
PERCY SHELLEY        Mont Blanc
DOROTHY WORDSWORTH      Floating island
ROBERT SOUTHEY   The cataract of Lodore
LETITIA LANDON      Airey Force
CHARLOTTE SMITH  from Beachy Head
JOHN CLARE     The pettichap’s nest
JOHN CLARE     Pewit’s nest
JOHN CLARE     The skylark
PERCY SHELLEY        To a skylark
LEIGH HUNT     To the grasshopper and the cricket
JOHN KEATS      On the grasshopper and cricket
JOHN KEATS      To Autumn
JOHN CLARE     from The Shepherd’s Calendar: October
PERCY SHELLEY        Ode to the west wind
JOHN CLARE     Emmonsails heath in winter
JOHN CLARE     Snow Winter fields
LORD BYRON   from Childe Harold’s pilgrimage
FELICIA HEMANS       The rock of Cader Idris
JOHN KEATS      On the sea
WILLIAM BLAKE         The tyger
 
SOCIETY AND POLITICS
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Old man travelling
MARY ROBINSON     London’s summer morning
WILLIAM BLAKE         London
WILLIAM BLAKE         The garden of love
HANNAH MORE        from Slavery: A Poem
ROBERT SOUTHEY   Poems on the slave trade: sonnet VI
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH To Toussaint L’Ouverture
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH from The Prelude: Residence in France
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Jones! As from Calais southwards
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Composed by the sea-side, near Calais
PERCY SHELLEY        The mask of anarchy
PERCY SHELLEY        England in 1819
JOHN CLARE     The fallen elm
WILLIAM BLAKE         from Auguries of innocence
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH          Resolution and independence
WILLIAM BLAKE         Preface to Milton: And did those feet
 
LOVE
LORD BYRON   She walks in beauty like the night
JOHN KEATS      The eve of St Agnes
LORD BYRON   from Don Juan
LORD BYRON   So, we’ll go no more a’roving
THOMAS MOORE      Alone in crowds to wander on
JOHN CLARE     Song: True love lives in absence
LETITIA LANDON      Juliet after the masquerade
THOMAS CAMPBELL Freedom and love
 
JOURNEYS OF THE IMAGINATION
JOHN KEATS      On first looking into Chapman’s Homer
WILLIAM BLAKE         The crystal cabinet
JOHN KEATS      La belle dame sans merci
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE Kubla Khan
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
GEORGE CRABBE      from Peter Grimes
SIR WALTER SCOTT from Marmion: the arrival of Lochinvar

INTIMATIONS OF MORTALITY AND IMMORTALITY
JOHN KEATS      Ode to a nightingale
WILLIAM BLAKE         The sick rose
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH from Lyrical Ballads: three ‘Lucy’ songs
SAMUEL ROGERS      A wish
SIR WALTER SCOTT Proud Maisie
PERCY SHELLEY        Ozymandias
HORACE SMITH         On a stupendous leg of granite
JOHN KEATS      Ode on a Grecian urn
LORD BYRON   Darkness
JOHN KEATS      Bright star
PERCY SHELLEY        from Adonais
LORD BYRON   On this day I complete my thirty-sixth year
JOHN CLARE     Sonnet: I am
JOHN CLARE     Lines: I am
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Surprised by joy
FELICIA HEMANS       To Wordsworth
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Ode: Intimations of Immortality
JOHN CLARE     An invite to eternity
 
List of Poets