About the Book
Treasury of over 170 English and American sonnets by more than 70 poets, from the Renaissance to the 20th century. Masterpieces by Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Blake, Swinburne, Yeats, Frost, Poe, many more. One of the most powerfully moving and evocative forms of poetry, the sonnet has been popular for more than 450 years. Unlike many other poetic genres, the sonnet has never gone out of fashion and its popularity today remains unabated. This collection contains a rich selection of over 170 English and American sonnets by more than 70 poets, from the Renaissance to the 20th century. Included are great sonnets by the greatest poets. All have been carefully chosen for distinction in style or substance or both. Included are such masterpieces of the form as: "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?" by Shakespeare; "Death Be Not Proud" by Donne; "On His Blindness" by Milton; "The World Is Too Much with Us" by Wordsworth; "Ozymandias" by Shelley; "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer" by Keats; "How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways" by E. Browning; "Acquainted with the Night" by Frost; "Euclid Alone Has Looked on Beauty Bare" by Millay; and poems by Spenser, Sidney, Burns, Blake, Byron, Longfellow, Tennyson, Poe, Swinburne, Wilde, E. A. Robinson, Dunbar, MacLeish, and many more. In this inexpensive treasury, lovers of poetry can study and savor the ways in which a host of great poets used the versatile sonnet form to express everything from the "light conceits of love" to the most profound meditations.
Table of Contents:
Acknowledements THOMAS WYATT "The long love that in my thought doth harbor" "My galley charged with forgetfulness" "Farewell, love, and all thy laws forever" "Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind" "HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY" The Soote Season "Love, that doth reign and live within my thought" GEORGE GASCOIGNE "You must not wonder, though you think it strange" SIR WALTER RALEGH [Sir Walter Ralegh to his Son] EDMUND SPENSER "Happy ye leaves! whenas those lily hands" "Most glorious Lord of life, that on this day" "One day I wrote her name upon the strand" "Fair is my love, when her fair golden hairs" SIR PHILIP SIDNEY "Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show" "With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies" "Come Sleep, O Sleep! the certain knot of peace" "Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust" SAMUEL DANIEL "Fair is my Love and cruel as she 's fair" "Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night" "Let others sing of Knights and Paladines" "If this be love, to draw a weary breath" MICHAEL DRAYTON "Dear, why should you command me to my rest" "Since there's no help, come le us kiss and part" JOSHUA SYLVESTER "Were I as base as in the lowly plain" WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE "When I do count the clock that tells the time" "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" "When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes" "When to the sessions of sweet silent thought" "Not marble, nor the gilded monuments" "Let me not to the marriage of true minds" "Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame" "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun" BARNABE BARNES "Ah, sweet Content, where is thy mild abode?" JOHN DONNE "Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?" "At the round earth's imagin'd corners, blow" "Death be not proud, though some have called thee" "Batter my heart, three-person'd God; for you" WILLIAM DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN "I know that all beneath the moon decays" "My lute, be as thou wert when thou didst grow" GEORGE HERBERT Prayer Redemption JOHN MILTON On His Being Arrived to ethe Age of Twenty-Three On His Blindness On the Late Massacre in Piedmont On His Deceased Wife "To the Lord General Cromwell, on the Proposals of Certain Ministers at the Committee for the Propagation of the Gospel" THOMAS GRAY On the Death of Mr. Richard West WILLIAM BLAKE To the Evening Star ROBERT BURNS A Sonnet upon Sonnets WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES "O Time! Who know'st a lenient hand to lay" WILLIAM WORDSWORTH "Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room" Scorn Not the Sonnet "It is a beauteous evening, calm and free" "Surprised by joy - impatient as the wind" "Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802" "The world is too much with us; late and soon" SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE Work Without Hope On a Discovery Made Too Late ROBERT SOUTHEY Winter CHARLES LAMB "A timid grace sits trembling in her eye" JOSEPH BLANCO WHITE To Night LEIGH HUNT The Nile To the Grasshopper and the Cricket "GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON" Sonnet on Chillon PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Ozymandias Sonnet: England in 1819 "Lift not the painted veil which those who live" WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT Midsummer November JOHN KEATS On First Looking into Chapman's Homer On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again On Seeing the Elgin Marbles "Why did I laugh to-night? No voice will tell" When I Have Fears Bright Star HARTLEY COLERIDGE Prayer "Long time a child, and still a child, when years" THOMAS HOOD Silence Death ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING "If thou must love me, let it be for nought" "Beloved, my Beloved, when I think" "If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange" "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways" HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW Mezzo Cammin The Cross of Snow Milton The Poets JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER Forgiveness Godspeed CHARLES TENNYSON TURNER The Buoy-Bell Orion "ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON" "If I were loved, as I desire to be" Poets and Their Bibliographies EDGAR ALAN POE To Science Silence WILLIAM BELL SCOTT My Mother A Garland for Advancing Years JONES VERY The Columbine The Fair Morning The Clouded Morning JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL The Street FREDERICK GODDARD TUCKERMAN "An upper chamber in a darkened house" "Last night I dreamed we parted once again" MATTHEW ARNOLD Shakespeare West London GEORGE MEREDITH Lucifer in Starlight "By this he knew she wept with waking eyes" "In our old shipwrecked days there was an hour" "Thus piteously Love closed what he begat" DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI A Sonnet Silent Noon A Superscription The One Hope CHRISTINA ROSSETTI Rest Youth Gone After Death Remember THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON The Sonnet's Voice Coleridge WILLIAM MORRIS Summer Dawn ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE Love and Sleep JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS The Sonnet (III) Lux Est Umbra Dei WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT On Her Vanity As to His Choice of Her TO One Who Would Make a Confession THOMAS HARDY Hap Often When Warring MATHILDE BLIND The Dead EDWARD DOWDEN "Leonardo's "Mona Lisa" Two Infinities ROBERT BRIDGES "While yet we wait for spring, and from the dry" "In autumn moonlight, when the white air wan" GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS God's Grandeur Spring [Carrion Comfort] "No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief" EUGENE LEE-HAMILTON What the Sonnet Is Sunken Gold ALICE MEYNELL Renouncement Changeless EMMA LAZARUS The New Colossus Echoes JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY Silence Eternity PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON Love's Music A Vain Wish OSCAR WILDE Helas E Tenebris CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS Burnt Lands The Night Sky WILLIAM BUTLER YEARTS Leda and the Swan Meru ERNEST DOWSON To One in Bedlam A Last Word EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON Reuben Bright How Annandale Went Out LORD ALFRED DOUGLAS The Dead Poet To Sleep PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR Douglass Slow Through the Dark ROBERT FROST Once by the Pacific Acquainted with the Night The Oven Bird Acceptance SIEGFRIED SASSOON Dreamers RUPERT BROOKE The Soldier EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY "Oh, sleep forever in the Latmian cave" "Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink" "What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why" "Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare" ARCHIBARD MACLEISH The End of the World WILFRED OWEN Anthem for Doomed Youth On Seeing a Piece of Our Artillery Brought into Action Alphabetical List of Titles and First Lines
