Exploring poetry
(Book)

The approach to poetry

The individual voice

The universal elements in poetry

The craftsman's work

Poetic figures and poetic meaning

Rhythm and movement

The poem as a whole

The life and truth of poetry

Music and emotion

Poetry as ritual and incantation

Poetic integrity

Poetry as description and vision

The elements of poetic description

Images and impressions

Complex descriptive effects

Poetry as pure vision

Narrative and dramatic poetry

Plot structure and poetic objectivity

Three traditional narrative forms: epic, metrical romance, and ballad

Dramatic poetry

Intellect and wit

Explicit argument

Wit and satire

Implied argument: irony and ambiguity

Metaphysical poetry

Poetic symbolism

Symbol and evocation

Allegory and intellectual symbolism

The symbol as a directive force

Poetry in its frame of reference

Tradition and poetic thought: classical and romantic

The "age and body of the time"

Quest and reconciliation.

CHAPTER ONE

The Approach to Poetry

I. THE INDIVIDUAL VOICE

Mending Wall / ROBERT FROST

Janet Waking / JOHN CROWE RANSOM

I cannot eat but little meat / ANONYMOUS

Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister / ROBERT BROWNING

A Glass ot Beer / JAMES STEPHENS

To a Young Lady: On Her Leaving the Town after the Coronation / ALEXANDER POPE

On the Late Massacre in Piemont / JOHN MILTON

Discipline / GEORGE HERBERT

On My First Son / BEN JONSON

To Daffodils / ROBERT HERRICK

Spring and Fall: to a Young Child / GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS.

II. THE UNIVERSAL ELEMENTS IN POETRY

College yells

Here we come a-piping / ANONYMOUS

Street-chants

Three little children sitting on the sand / ANONYMOUS

1. Nursery Rhymes : I had a little nut tree ; How many miles to Babylon ; Old King Cole ; Fe, fi, fo, fum ; Humpty Dumpty ; I had a little husband ; Ride a cock-horse ; Here sits the Lord Mayor

2. I sing of a maiden / ANONYMOUS

I have a yong suster / ANONYMOUS

Comin' thro' the Rye / ROBERT BURNS

from Ezek'l saw de wheel / ANONYMOUS

3. The Silver Penny / WALTER DE LA MARE

An Old Song Re-sung / JOHN MASEFIELD

Brown Penny / WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS.

III. THE CRAFTSMAN'S WORK

I love all beauteous things / ROBERT BRIDGES

I wandered lonely as a cloud / The Solitary Reaper / WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

Poetry / MARIANNE MOORE

Ars Poetica / ARCHIBALD MACLEISH

Musee des Beaux Arts / W. H. AUDEN

At the Ball Game / WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

Anecdote of the Jar / WALLACE STEVENS

Ode on a Grecian Urn / JOHN KEATS.

IV. POETIC FIGURES AND POETIC MEANING

Upon Julia's Clothes / ROBERT HERRICK

Flowers by the Sea / WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

Poems / Water / HILDA CONKLING

The Pool / Oread / H. D.

The Eagle / ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

Snow / LOUIS MACNEICE

Songs: Spring and Winter / WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Cherry-ripe / THOMAS CAMPION

The Triumph of Charis / BEN JONSON

To Electra / ROBERT HERRICK

O my luve is like a red red rose / ROBERT BURNS

The Silken Tent / ROBERT FROST

To Night / PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

Song: Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white / ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

Are they shadows that we see? / SAMUEL DANIEL

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame / GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

The Darkling Thrush / THOMAS HARDY

A Grave / MARIANNE MOORE.

V. RHYTHM AND MOVEMENT

Eight O'Clock / A. E. HOUSMAN

from Yankee Doodle / ANONYMOUS

Hey, Betty Martin! / ANONYMOUS

The Dance / WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

The Private Dining Room / OGDEN NASH

Trebetherick / JOHN BETJEMAN

Cargoes / JOHN MASEFIELD

So, we'll go no more a roving / GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON

The Flower-fed Buffaloes / VACHEL LINDSAY

Orchard / H. D.

Hymn of Pan / PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

I am he that walks with the tender and growing night (from Song of Myself) / WALT WHITMAN

The Seafarer / EZRA POUND.

VI. THE POEM AS A WHOLE

A slumber did my spirit seal / WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

Sonnet LXXIII: That time of year thou mayst in me behold / WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

God's Grandeur / GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE from Sonnets : XVIII: Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day? ; XXIX: When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes ; XXX: When to the sessions of sweet silent thought ; LV: Not marble, nor the gilded monuments ; LX: Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore ; LXVI: Tir'd with all these for restful death I cry ; CVI: When in the Chronicle of wasted time

Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part / MICHAEL DRAYTON

When I consider how my light is spent / On the Detraction Which Followed upon My Writing Certain Treatises / How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth / JOHN MILTON

London, 1802 / Composed upon Westminster Bridge / Surprised by joy-impatient as the wind / Mutability / The world is too much with us; late and soon / WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer / On the Sea / JOHN KEATS

Oh, sleep forever in the Latmian cave / EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

The Collar / Sins' Round / Easter Wings / GEORGE HERBERT

All the flowers of the spring / JOHN WEBSTER

My Lost Youth / HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

The Steeple-Jack / MARIANNE MOORE

During Wind and Rain / THOMAS HARDY

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening / ROBERT FROST.

CHAPTER TWO

The Life and Truth of Poetry

I. MUSIC AND EMOTION

Full fathom five thy father lies / WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Sweet Echo, sweetest nymph, that liv'st unseen (from Comus) / JOHN MILTON

I hear an army charging upon the land / JAMES JOYCE

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Songs from the Plays : Hark, Hark! The lark at heaven's gate sings (from Cymbeline) ; When that I was and a little tiny boy (from Twelfth Night) ; O Mistress mine, where are you roaming (from Twelfth Night) ; Under the greenwood tree (from As You Like It) ; It was a lover and his lass (from As You Like It) ; When daffodils begin to peer (from The Winter's Tale) ; Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more! (from Much Ado about Nothing) ; Come away, come away, Death! (from Twelfth Night) ; Take, o! take those lips away (from Measure for Measure)

Rose-cheekt Laura, come / When to her lute Corinna sings / Follow your saint, follow with accents sweet / THOMAS CAMPION

Weep you no more, sad fountains / ANONYMOUS

Slow, slow, fresh fount, keep time with my salt tears / BEN JONSON

Upon julia's Voice / ROBERT HERRICK

To-: Music, when soft voices die / PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

Song: The splendour falls on castle walls / The Lotos-Eaters / ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

The Garden of Proserpine / Chorus from Atalanta in Calydon / ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

The hill pines were sighing / Nightingales / ROBERT BRIDGES

At a Solemn Music / JOHN MILTON

A Song for St. Cecilia's Day / JOHN DRYDEN

Peter Quince at the Clavier / WALLACE STEVENS.

II. POETRY AS RITUAL AND INCANTATION

THE KING JAMES BIBLE: Psalm 137

The Traveller's Curse After Misdirection / ROBERT GRAVES

In a Station of the Metro / EZRA POUND

1. Navajo Incantations : Therefore I Must Tell the Truth / TORLINO ; Incantation for Rain / ANONYMOUS ; A Prayer of the Night Chant / ANONYMOUS

2. The Bailey Beareth the Bell Away / ANONYMOUS

The Song at the Well (from The Old Wives' Tale) / Bethsabe Bathing (from David and Bethsabe) / GEORGE PEELE

On a May Morning / JOHN MILTON

Corinna's Going A-Maying / ROBERT HERRICK

3. Ding dong! The castle bell! / ANONYMOUS

Call for the robin-redbreast and the wren / JOHN WEBSTER

Fear no more the heat o' the sun (from Cymbeline) / WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

The glories of our blood and state / JAMES SHIRLEY

4. From The King James Bible : Psalm 23 ; From ECCLESIASTES: Remember also thy Creator ; From THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW: Blessed are the poor in spirit

5. Ode to the West Wind / PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

Ceremony after a Fire Raid / DYLAN THOMAS.

III. POETIC INTEGRITY

Dover Beach / MATTHEW ARNOLD

The Tyger / WILLIAM BLAKE

1. Introduction to Songs of Innocence / WILLIAM BLAKE

My heart leaps up when I behold / WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

A Great Time / w. H. DAVIES

The Lamb / The Shepherd / WILLIAM BLAKE

from The Prelude, or, Growth of a Poet's Mind! / Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood / WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

The Retreat / HENRY VAUGHAN

2. Introduction to Songs of Experience / WILLIAM BLAKE

The Lie / SIR WALTER RALEIGH

The Garden of Love / Song: Never seek to tell thy love / WILLIAM BLAKE

Epws (Eros) / ROBERT BRIDGES

'Twas like a maelstrom, with a notch / EMILY DICKINSON

Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop / WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS.

CHAPTER THREE

Poetry as Description and Vision

I. THE ELEMENTS OF POETIC DESCRIPTION

Spring and All / WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

A Horse (from Venus and Adonis) / WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Mouse's Nest / JOHN CLARE

A Description of the Morning / Description of a City Shower / JONATHAN SWIFT

The Carpenter's Young Wife (from The Canterbury Tales) / GEOFFREY CHAUCER

Belinda's Morning (from The Rape of the Lock) / ALEXANDER POPE

A Dutch Picture / HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

The Englishman in Italy / ROBERT BROWNING

The Fish / ELIZABETH BISHOP.

II. IMAGES AND IMPRESSIONS

1. A light exists in spring / As imperceptibly as grief / There's a certain slant of light / EMILY DICKINSON

2. The Manor Farm / EDWARD THOMAS

A Hillside Thaw / ROBERT FROST

The Midnight Skaters / EDMUND BLUNDEN

Ice / CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS

The Five Students / THOMAS HARDY

3· A narrow fellow in the grass / EMILY DICKINSON

A Spring Serpent / YVOR WINTERS

Solitude / ARCHIBALD LAMPMAN

Mowing / ROBERT FROST

The Mowing / CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS

On the Grasshopper and the Cricket / JOHN KEATS

4· Ode to Autumn / from Hyperion / JOHN KEATS

from Canto XVI / EZRA POUND.

III. COMPLEX DESCRIPTIVE EFFECTS

The Apparition of His Mistress Calling Him to Elysium / ROBERT HERRICK

Bermudas / ANDREW MARVELL

Aubade / EDITH SITWELL

Winter with the Gulf Stream / GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

Repose of Rivers / Voyages II / HART CRANE

Snakes, Mongooses, Snake-Charmers and the Like / MARIANNE MOORE.

IV. POETRY AS PURE VISION

The Vision of God (from Paradiso, Canto XXXIII) / DANTE ALIGHIERI

The World / HENRY VAUGHAN

Hail Holy Light (from Paradise Lost, Book III) / Satan Discovers Eden (from Paradise Lost, Book IV) / JOHN MILTON

Kubla Khan / SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

Canto XVII / EZRA POUND.

CHAPTER FOUR

Narrative and Dramatic Poetry

I. PLOT STRUCTURE AND POETIC OBJECTIVITY

from The Epitaph, or Ballade of the Hanged / FRANCOIS VILLON

The Silent Slain / ARCHIBALD MACLEISH

Badger / JOHN CLARE

Boy with His Hair Cut Short / MURIEL RUKEYSER

Paolo and Francesca (from the Inferno, Canto V) / DANTE ALIGHIERI

The Haystack in the Floods / WILLIAM MORRIS

Phillis, or, the Progress of Love / JONATHAN SWIFT

Richard Cory / EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON

My Sister's Sleep / DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI

The last night that she lived / 'Twas warm at first, like us / I heard a fly buzz when I died / I felt a funeral in my brain / EMILY DICKINSON.

II. THREE TRADITIONAL NARRATIVE FORMS: EPIC, METRICAL ROMANCE, AND BALLAD

Lucifer in Starlight / GEORGE MEREDITH

The Hangman's Tree / ANONYMOUS

The Three Ravens / ANONYMOUS

O what is that sound which so thrills the ear / W. H. AUDEN

1. English and Scottish Popular Ballads

Sir Patrick Spens / ANONYMOUS

The Wife of Ushers Well / ANONYMOUS

Edward, Edward / ANONYMOUS

The Twa Corbies / ANONYMOUS

The Unquiet Grave / ANONYMOUS

2. Tales and Literary Ballads

Screaming Tarn / ROBERT BRIDGES

Danny Deever / RUDYARD KIPLING

The Eve of St. Agnes / JOHN KEATS

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner / SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

3. The Epic

War in Heaven (The First Battle) (from Paradise Lost, Book VI) / JOHN MILTON.

III. DRAMATIC POETRY

Billy in the Darbies / HERMAN MELVILLE

My Last Duchess / The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed's Church / ROBERT BROWNING

Ulysses / ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

Longface Mahoney Discusses Heaven / HORACE GREGORY

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock / T. S. ELIOT

2. The Witch of Coos / ROBERT FROST

3· Hamlet, Act I, Scenes i, iv, v / WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

CHAPTER FIVE

Intellect and Wit

I. EXPLICIT ARGUMENT

Virtue / GEORGE HERBERT

On Degree (from Troilus and Cressida) / WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

The New Philosophy (from The First Anniversary) / JOHN DONNE

Free Will and God's Foreknowledge (from Paradise Lost, Book III) / JOHN MILTON

The Great Chain of Being (from Essay on Man) / ALEXANDER POPE

O yet we trust that somehow good (In Memoriam: LIV-LVI) / ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

September 1, 1939 / w. H. AUDEN.

II. WIT AND SATIRE

from Moral Essays / ALEXANDER POPE

from A Satire against Mankind / JOHN WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER

from Epistle to Arbuthnot / ALEXANDER POPE

Epigrams on Castlereagh / GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON

from In Westminster Abbey / JOHN BETJEMAN

from MacFlecknoe / JOHN DRYDEN

On Charles II / JOHN WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER

Of Treason / SIR JOHN HARINGTON

A Satyrical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General, 1722 / JONATHAN SWIFT

On the Collar of a Dog Presented by Mr. Pope to the Prince of Wales / At Timon's Villa (from Epistle to Burlington) / / ALEXANDER POPE

2. Heaven / RUPERT BROOKE

Cassandra / EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON

"next to of course god america i / E. E. CUMMINGS

Several Voices Out of a Cloud / LOUISE BOGAN

Bagpipe Music / LOUIS MACNEICE

Thirteen O'Clock / KENNETH FEARING.

III. IMPLIED ARGUMENT: IRONY AND AMBIGUITY

The Latest Decalogue / ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH

I asked a thief / Abstinence sows sand all over / WILLIAM BLAKE

The Apparition / JOHN DONNE

On His Deceased Wife / JOHN MILTON

The Picture of Little T.C. in a Prospect of Flowers / ANDREW MARVELL

To a Child of Quality / MATTHEW PRIOR

For Anne Gregory / WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

The Death of the Duke of Buckingham (from Moral Essays. Epistle III) / ALEXANDER POPE

On the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes / Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College / THOMAS GRAY

Calm is the morn without a 'sound (In Memoriam: XI) / ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

Drowning is not so pitiful / EMILY DICKINSON

Channel Firing / THOMAS HARDY

The Soul Longs to Return Whence It Came / RICHARD EBERHART

Passage / HART CRANE

An Epitaph / ANONYMOUS.

IV. METAPHYSICAL POETRY

The Sun Rising / Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward / JOHN DONNE

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE from Sonnets : XCIV: They that have power to hurt, and will do none ; CXLVI: Poor soul, the center of my sinful earth / To Heaven / BEN JONSON

The Ecstasy / A Valediction Forbidding Mourning / The Good-morrow / JOHN DONNE

JOHN DONNE from Holy Sonnets : VII: At the round earth's imagin'd corners blow ; IX: If poisonous minerals, and it that tree ; X: Death, be not proud, though some have called thee ; XIII: What if this present were the world's last night? ; XIV: Batter my heart, three personed God; for you ; XVIII: Show me, dear Christ, Thy Spouse so bright and clear

The Garden / ANDREW MARVELL

Legal Fiction / WILLIAM EMPSON.

CHAPTER SIX

Poetic Symbolism

I. SYMBOL AND EVOCATION

The Sick Rose / WILLIAM BLAKE

1. Hyd, Absolon, thy gilte tresses clere / GEOFFREY CHAUCER

Past ruin'd Ilion Helen lives / WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

The Ballad of Dead Ladies / FRANCOIS VILLON

The Hill / EDGAR LEE MASTERS

2. Ah! Sun-flower / WILLIAM BLAKE

The Cat and the Moon / WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Because I could not stop for Death / EMILY DICKINSON

3· Lycidas / JOHN MILTON

Ode to a Nightingale / JOHN KEATS

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd / WALT WHITMAN

4· The Express / STEPHEN SPENDER

The Yachts / WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

To Brooklyn Bridge / HART CRANE

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower / DYLAN THOMAS.

II. ALLEGORY AND INTELLECTUAL SYMBOLISM

The Pulley / GEORGE HERBERT

Strange Meeting / WILFRED OWEN

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner / RANDALL JARRELL

Fife Tune / JOHN MANIFOLD

Midway the Journey (from Inferno: Canto I) / DANTE ALIGHIERI

Lully, lulley / ANONYMOUS

The Faerie Queene (from Book I: Canto I) / EDMUND SPENSER

Redemption / Love / The Church-Floor / Peace / GEORGE HERBERT

Regeneration / HENRY VAUGHAN

Fra bank to bank / MARK ALEXANDER BOYD

Stepping Westward / WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

Hymn to the Night / HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

To a Waterfowl / WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

A noiseless patient spider / WALT WHITMAN

The Butterfly / MARGARET AVISON

The Groundhog / RICHARD EBERHART

Tortoise Shell / D. H. LAWRENCE.

III. THE SYMBOL AS A DIRECTIVE FORCE

Sailing to Byzantium / Leda and the Swan / WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Ozymandias / PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

The Windhover / GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

On the Morning of Christ's Nativity / JOHN MILTON

The Secular Masque / JOHN DRYDEN

Chorus from Hellas: The world's great age begins anew / PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

Two Songs from a Play / The Second Coming / WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

And the age ended / w. H. AUDEN.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Poetry in Its Frame of Reference

I. TRADITION AND POETIC THOUGHT: CLASSICAL AND ROMANTIC

To Helen / EDGAR ALLAN POE

Song: Go lovely rose / EDMUND WALLER

1. The Classical Tradition

The Silver Swan / ANONYMOUS

Even such is time / SIR WALTER RALEIGH

An Ode to Himself / BEN JONSON

Upon Julia Weeping / To Laurels / ROBERT HERRICK

To the Memory of Mr. Oldham / JOHN DRYDEN

A Better Answer (to Cloe Jealous) / MATTHEW PRIOR

Ode on Solitude / ALEXANDER POPE

Ternissa! you are fled! / Dirce / Rose Aylmer / WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

The Comet at Yell'ham / THOMAS HARDY

To an Athlete Dying Young / A. E. HOUSMAN

Reluctance / ROBERT FROST

An Ode on the Despoilers of Learning in an American University (1947) / YVOR WINTERS

2. The Romantic Spirit

Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey / To Toussaint L'Ouverture / WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

Sonnet on Chillon / GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON

Song to the Men of England / To-: One word is too often profaned / The Indian Serenade / PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

Ode on Melancholy / La Belle Dame sans Merci / JOHN KEATS

I think continually of those who were truly great / STEPHEN SPENDER.

II. THE "AGE AND BODY OF THE TIME"

Prelude I / T. S. ELIOT

1. Poems of Love

Western wind, when will thou blow? / ANONYMOUS

Cupid and my Campaspe played / JOHN LYLY

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love / CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd / SIR WALTER RALEIGH

Leave me, O love / SIR PHILIP SIDNEY

from Sonnets : CXVI: Let me not to the marriage of true minds ; CXXX: My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun ; CXXIX: Th'expense of Spirit in a waste of shame / WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

They flee from me / SIR THOMAS WYATT

The Anniversary / JOHN DONNE

To the Virgins to Make Much of Time / ROBERT HERRICK

To His Coy Mistress / ANDREW MARVELL

Stanzas on Woman / OLIVER GOLDSMITH

She walks in beauty / GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON

Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art / JOHN KEATS

Come into the garden, Maud / ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

Two in the Campagna / ROBERT BROWNING

Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore (from Song at Myself) / WALT WHITMAN

The Summons / JAMES LAUGHLIN

2. Poems of War

The Battle of Brunanburh / ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

The War-Song of Dinas Vawr / THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK

To Lucasta, Going to the Wars / RICHARD LOVELACE

Trail all your pikes / ANNE FINCH, COUNTESS OF WINCHILSEA

Ode Written in the Beginning of the Year 1746 / WILLIAM COLLINS

Concord Hymn / RALPH WALDO EMERSON

The Portent / HERMAN MELVILLE

A sight in camp in the daybreak gray and dim / WALT WHITMAN

The Soldier / RUPERT BROOKE

Insensibility / WILFRED OWEN

As the team's head-brass / EDWARD THOMAS

In Time of "the Breaking of Nations" / THOMAS HARDY

To a Conscript of 1940 / HERBERT READ

The Fury Of Aerial Bombardment / RICHARD EBERHART

3. Variations on a Theme

Evening Quatrains / CHARLES COTTON

Ode to Evening / WILLIAM COLLINS

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard / THOMAS GRAY

A Summer Night / MATTHEW ARNOLD

Rhapsody on a Windy Night / Gerontion / T. S. ELIOT

The Mediterranean / ALLEN TATE

In the naked bed, in Plato's cave / DELMORE SCHWARTZ.

III. QUEST AND RECONCILIATION

London / WILLIAM BLAKE

Final Chorus from Samson Agonistes / JOHN MILTON

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking / WALT WHITMAN

And death shall have no dominion / DYLAN THOMAS

A Dialogue of Self and Soul / WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Little Gidding / T. S. ELIOT

O yonge fresshe folkes (from Troilus and Criseyde) / GEOFFREY CHAUCER.