The New Penguin Book of Romantic Poetry (Penguin Classics) - Softcover

Wordsworth, Jonathan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140435689 ISBN 13: 9780140435689

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2005

Synopsis

The Romanticism that emerged after the American and French revolutions of 1776 and 1789 represented a new flowering of the imagination and the spirit, and a celebration of the soul of humanity with its capacity for love. This extraordinary collection sets the acknowledged genius of poems such as Blake's 'Tyger', Coleridge's 'Khubla Khan' and Shelley's 'Ozymandias' alongside verse from less familiar figures and women poets such as Charlotte Smith and Mary Robinson. We also see familiar poets in an unaccustomed light, as Blake, Wordsworth and Shelley demonstrate their comic skills, while Coleridge, Keats and Clare explore the Gothic and surreal.

About this title

About the Author

Jonathan Wordsworth is descended from William Wordsworth's younger brother Christopher. He is Chairman of the Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere, retired Professor of English Literature at Oxford, and has edited much of Wordsworth's poetry, including The Prelude: Four Texts (Penguin). Jessica Wordsworth is Administator of the Wordsworth Winter School and Grasmere Summer Conference.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Penguin Book of Romantic Poetry

By Jonathan Wordsworth, Jessica Wordsworth

Penguin Publishing Group

Copyright © 2006 Jonathan Wordsworth
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-14-043568-9

"The world is too much with us"

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
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.

"The Solitary Reaper"

Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.

No Nightingale did ever chaunt
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:
A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard
In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings?--
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again?

Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;--
I listened, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Penguin Book of Romantic Poetry by Jonathan Wordsworth, Jessica Wordsworth. Copyright © 2006 Jonathan Wordsworth. Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0140435689
• ISBN 13: 9780140435689
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 1005