The Best Short Poems of the Nineteenth Century: Being the Twenty-five Best Short Poems as Selected by Ballot by Competent Critics |
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Alfred angel Art thou bar be moaning BATTLE-HYMN Best Short Poems Blessed Blow BREAK BUGLE SONG canst CHAMBERED NAUTILUS Charles Kingsley clasp cold CONCORD FIGHT 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 set the wild 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 Bryant William Wordsworth William women must weep
Popular passages
Page 11 - The splendor falls on castle walls And snowy summits old in story : The long light shakes across the lakes, And the •wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, Blow, bugle ; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.
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 25 - There is a Power whose care Teaches thy way along that pathless coast, — The desert and illimitable air, — Lone wandering, but not lost. All day thy wings have fanned At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, Though the dark night is near.
Page 9 - This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, Sails the unshadowed main, — The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings, And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.
Page 39 - The post of the foe ; Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form, Yet the strong man must go : For the journey is done and the summit attained, And the barriers fall, Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained, The reward of it all. I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more, The best and the last ! I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forebore, And bade me creep past.
Page 29 - In Heaven a spirit doth dwell "Whose heart-strings are a lute"; None sing so wildly well As the angel Israfel, And the giddy stars (so legends tell), Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell Of his voice, all mute.
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!