The Penguin Book of English Song*
GEOFFREY CHAUCER (c.1343–1400)
Merciles Beaute ∙ General Prologue
Rorate cœli desuper ∙ To the City of London
To maystres Margaret Hussey ∙ The Tunnyng of Elynour Rummynge per Skelton Laureat ∙ My praty Besse
SIR WALTER RALEGH (c.1552–1618)
On the life of man ∙ Euen such is tyme ∙ Sir Walter Ravleigh to his sonne
From An Hymne of Heavenly Beavtie ∙ Sonnet VI (‘Be nought dismay’d’) ∙ Sonnet LXXVIII (‘Lackyng my loue I go from place to place’) ∙ Sonnet XIX (‘The merry Cuckow, messenger of Spring’)
Sixt song (‘O you that heare this voice’) ∙ Ninth song (‘Goe my Flocke, goe get you hence’) ∙ Charita
ST ROBERT SOUTHWELL (?1561–95)
New heaven, new warre ∙ New Prince, new pompe
The passionate Sheepheard to his love
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564–1616)
Who is Siluia? ∙ When Dasies pied, and Violets blew ∙ When Isicles hang by the wall ∙ Tell me where is fancie bred ∙ Sigh no more, ladies ∙ Vnder the greene wood tree ∙ Blow, blow, thou winter winde ∙ It was a Louer, and his lasse ∙ How should I your true loue know ∙ To-morrow is S. Valentines day ∙ They bore him bare fac’d on the Beer ∙ She neuer told her loue ∙ O Mistris mine where are you roming? ∙ Come away, come away death ∙ When that I was and a little tine boy ∙ Glamys thou art, and Cawdor ∙ Come Thou Monarch of the Vine ∙ Hearke, hearke, the Larke at Heauens gate sings ∙ Fear no more the heate o’ the’ Sun ∙ When Daffadils begin to peere ∙ The Clowd-capt Towres ∙ Come vnto these yellow sands ∙ Full fadom fiue thy Father lies ∙ Where the Bee sucks, there suck I ∙ Sonnet 130 (‘My mistres eyes are nothing like the Sunne’) ∙ Sonnet 43 (‘When most I winke’)
I must complaine ∙ I care not for these Ladies ∙ The Sypres curten of the night ∙ Neuer weather-beaten Saile ∙ Come, O come my lifes delight
The song (‘Golden slumbers kisse your eyes’) ∙ The song (‘Art thou poore yet hast thou golden Slumbers’) ∙ The first Three-man’s song ∙ The second Three-man’s song
The expiration ∙ A hymne to God the Father ∙ The message ∙ Oh my blacke Soule! ∙ Batter my heart, three person’d God ∙ O might those sighes and teares returne againe ∙ Oh, to vex me, contraryes meet in one ∙ What if this present were the worlds last night? ∙ Since she whom I lov’d hath payd her last debt ∙ At the round earths imagin’d corners ∙ Thou hast made me, and shall thy worke decay? ∙ Death be not proud ∙ We cannot bid the fruits ∙ In the wombe of the earth ∙ Nunc, lento sonitu
Song. To Celia (‘Drinke to me, onely, with thine eyes’) ∙ Song. To Celia (‘Come my Celia, let us prove’) ∙ Epitaph on S[alomon] P[avy] ∙ Echo’s song (‘Slow, slow, fresh fount’) ∙ Doe but looke on her eyes ∙ Song (‘O, that ioy so soone should waste!’) ∙ Hymn to Diana (‘Queene and Huntresse, chaste, and faire’)
Take, oh take those lips away ∙ Song (‘Lay a garland on my hearse’) ∙ Song (‘Come sleepe, and with thy sweet deceiving’) ∙ Orpheus with his lute
Among the Mirtles, as I walkt ∙ To the Virgins, to make much of Time ∙ To Anthea, who may command him any thing ∙ The bracelet to Julia ∙ The maiden-blush ∙ To Daisies, not to shut so soone ∙ The Night-piece, to Julia ∙ Upon Julia’s haire fill’d with Dew ∙ Cherrie-Ripe ∙ To daffadills ∙ To Musique, to becalme his Fever ∙ To Violets ∙ The succession of the foure sweet months ∙ Upon Julia’s clothes ∙ To the Willow-tree ∙ To Musick, to becalme a sweet-sick-youth
On our Saviour’s Passion ∙ Ev’n like two little bank-dividing brooks
The 23d Psalme ∙ Praise (II) ∙ The Elixir ∙ Easter ∙ Love (III) ∙ The call ∙ Antiphon (I)
The self-banish’d ∙ Go lovely Rose
Psalm 136 ∙ L’Allegro ∙ Il Penseroso ∙ At a Solemn Musick ∙ Sonnet XVI (‘When I consider how my light is spent’) ∙ Sonnet VII (‘How soon hath Time’) ∙ Song. On May morning ∙ The Hymn
Song (‘Why so pale and wan?’) ∙ A poem, with the Answer. Sir J.S.
To Lucasta, Going to the Warres ∙ To Althea, from prison ∙ Gratiana dauncing and singing
The Mower to the Glo-Worms ∙ Bermudas ∙ The fair singer
Valiant-for-Truth’s song ∙ Whose Delectable Mountains are these?
Song of Venus ∙ Musick for a while ∙ I attempt from love’s sickness to fly ∙ On the death of Mr. Purcell ∙ Rondelay ∙ Alexander’s Feast ∙ A song for St CECILIA’s Day, November 22, 1687
Will you see the Infancy of this sublime and celestial Greatness? ∙ Sweet Infancy! ∙ How like an Angel came I down! ∙ These little Limmes ∙ An Empty Book is like an Infants Soul ∙ All appeared New, and Strange at [the] first ∙ Rise noble soule and come away ∙ How desolate! ∙ You never Enjoy the World aright
JOHN WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER (1647–80)
Upon Drinking in a Bowl ∙ A Song (‘My dear Mistress has a Heart’)
Man frail, and God eternal ∙ Crucifixion to the world by the Cross of Christ
O ruddier than the cherry! ∙ Were I laid on Greenland’s Coast
Sally in our alley ∙ A loyal song
Where-e’er you walk ∙ How dark, O Lord, are thy decrees! ∙ The dying Christian to his soul, Ode
An Ode (‘Rule, Britannia!’) ∙ Lines from The Seasons (‘Come, gentle Spring, ethereal mildness, come’)
Light shining out of darkness ∙ Walking with God
Song (‘O Tuneful voice’) ∙ The spirit’s song ∙ A mermaid’s song ∙ Song (‘The season comes when first we met’) ∙ Song (‘My mother bids me bind my hair’) ∙ Song (‘The anguish of my bursting heart’) ∙ Song (‘Far from this throbbing bosom haste’) ∙ Song (‘When hollow bursts the rushing wind’) ∙ Song (‘To wander alone’)
Lines from The Borough (‘Old Peter Grimes made fishing his employ’) ∙ Lines from The Borough and Tales in Verse (‘Here the strong mallow strikes her slimy root’ etc.)
And did those feet in ancient time ∙ I saw a chapel all of gold ∙ The Sick Rose ∙ A Cradle Song ∙ Infant Joy ∙ *A Poison Tree ∙ Introduction ∙ *London ∙ The Lamb ∙ The Shepherd ∙ *Ah! Sun-flower ∙ A Divine Image ∙ The Divine Image ∙ Eternity ∙ Holy Thursday ∙ Proverbs 22–5 ∙ Proverb 21 ∙ The Chimney Sweeper ∙ Proverb 31 ∙ Proverb 41 ∙ The Tyger ∙ Proverbs 44, 18, 52 ∙ The Fly ∙ Proverbs 12, 11, 10 ∙ Auguries of Innocence ∙ The Little Vagabond
Musing on the roaring ocean ∙ For the sake of Somebody ∙ The Highland widow’s lament ∙ My heart’s in the Highlands ∙ The Highland balou ∙ The captain’s lady ∙ The bonie lad that’s far awa ∙ I hae a wife o’ my ain ∙ Out over the Forth ∙ A red, red rose ∙ Wha is that at my bower door? ∙ John Anderson my jo ∙ The banks o’ Doon ∙ Amang the trees ∙ O, wert thou in the cauld blast ∙ Epistle to John Maxwell, Esq., of Terraughtie ∙ A rose-bud, by my early walk ∙ Wee Willie Gray ∙ My Hoggie ∙ Sweet Afton ∙ The winter it is past ∙ Leezie Lindsay ∙ Auld lang syne
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770–1850)
I travelled among unknown men ∙ The rainbow ∙ Daffodils ∙ Ode. Intimations of immortality from recollections of early childhood ∙ Lines 63–77 from The Prelude ∙ Remembrance of Collins ∙ Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
Song (‘Soldier rest! thy warfare o’er’) ∙ Song continued (‘Huntsman, rest! thy chase is done’) ∙ Hymn to the Virgin ∙ Lay of the imprisoned huntsman ∙ Song (‘The heath this night must be my bed’) ∙ Boat song ∙ Coronach ∙ For leagues along the watery way ∙ The Crusader’s return
Oh! breathe not his name ∙ How dear to me the hour ∙ Rich and rare were the gems she wore ∙ The origin of the Harp ∙ Row gently here ∙ When through the piazzetta ∙ At the mid hour of night ∙ Oft in the stilly night ∙ ’Tis the last rose of summer
GEORGE GORDON BYRON (1788–1824)
To a lady ∙ On parting ∙ Sun of the sleepless! ∙ To Thomas Moore ∙ I saw thee weep ∙ My soul is dark ∙ Maid of Athens ∙ So, we’ll go no more a roving ∙ Stanzas for music ∙ When we two parted ∙ Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte ∙ Stanzas to Augusta
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (1792–1822)
The fugitives ∙ Lines from Prometheus Unbound (‘My soul is an enchanted boat’) ∙ The world’s wanderers ∙ On a faded violet ∙ A dirge ∙ Ode to the West Wind ∙ Arethusa ∙ The sunset ∙ Love’s philosophy ∙ From the Arabic: An imitation ∙ To — (‘Music, when soft voices die’) ∙ The Indian serenade ∙ To Jane: ‘The keen stars were twinkling’ ∙ To — (‘One word is too often profaned’) ∙ Lines (‘Far, far away’) ∙ A widow bird sate mourning ∙ The waning moon ∙ To the moon ∙ Lines from Prometheus Unbound (‘On a poet’s lips I slept’) ∙ Music
‘Here morning in the ploughmans songs is met’ ∙ ‘The driving boy beside his team’ ∙ ‘When once the sun sinks in the west’ ∙ Little trotty wagtail ∙ The peasant poet ∙ ‘The turkeys wade the close to catch the bees’ ∙ ‘The shepherd on his journey heard when nigh’ ∙ ‘When first we hear the shy come nightingales’
HENRY FRANCIS LYTE (1793–1847)
La Belle Dame sans Merci ∙ Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art ∙ Where be ye going, you Devon maid ∙ Extracts from an Opera VI (‘Asleep! Oh, sleep a little while’) ∙ Ode on a Grecian urn ∙ To Sleep ∙ Sleep and poetry ∙ I had a dove, and the sweet dove died
Blackmwore maïdens ∙ My orcha’d in Linden Lea
The Pillar of the Cloud ∙ Lines from The Dream of Gerontius (‘Jesu, Maria – I am near to death’; ‘Softly and gently, dearly-ransom’d soul’) ∙ from the sermon ‘Wisdom and Innocence’ (‘May He support us all the day long …’)
THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES (1803–49)
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING (1806–61)
A sabbath morning at sea ∙ Sonnet I (‘I thought once how Theocritus had sung’) ∙ Sonnet XXVIII (‘My letters! – all dead paper, . . mute and white –!’) ∙ Sonnet XXXIV (‘With the same heart, I said, I’ll answer thee’) ∙ Sonnet XXXV (‘If I leave all for thee’) ∙ Sonnet XL (‘Oh, yes! – they love through all this world of ours! –’) ∙ Sonnet XLIII (‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways! –’)
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON (1809–92)
Crossing the bar ∙ from Maud: ‘I hate the dreadful hollow’; ‘A voice by the cedar tree’; ‘She came to the village church’; ‘O let the solid ground’; ‘Birds in the high Hall-garden’; ‘Maud has a garden of roses’; ‘Go not, happy day’; ‘I have led her home’; ‘Come into the garden, Maud’; ‘The fault was mine’; ‘Dead, long dead’; ‘O that ’twere possible’; ‘My life has crept so long’ ∙ from In Memoriam: ‘I sing to him that rests below’; ‘O Sorrow, wilt thou live with me’; ‘If Sleep and Death be truly one’; ‘Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again’; ‘When on my bed the moonlight falls’; ‘I cannot see the features right’; ‘Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet’; ‘To Sleep I give my powers away’; ‘Sweet after showers, ambrosial air’; ‘Who loves not Knowledge?’; ‘Strong Son of God, immortal Love’; ‘Whatever I have said or sung’ ∙ Lines from The Princess (‘Now sleeps the crimson petal’) ∙ lute song from Queen Mary ‘(Hapless doom of woman happy in betrothing!’) ∙ Lines from ‘The Lotos-Eaters’ (‘There is sweet music here that softer falls’) ∙ Lines from The Princess (‘The splendour falls on castle walls’) ∙ The Kraken
Prospice ∙ Lines from ‘In a gondola’ ∙ Lines from ‘A lovers’ quarrel’ (‘Love, if you knew the light’) ∙ from James Lee’s Wife: James Lee’s wife speaks at the window; By the fireside; In the doorway; On the cliff; Among the rocks ∙ Such a starved bank of moss ∙ Meeting at night ∙ My star ∙ Song (‘Nay but you, who do not love her’) ∙ The worst of it ∙ After ∙ Lines from Easter-Day (‘And I cowered deprecatingly’) ∙ The year’s at the spring ∙ Home-thoughts, from abroad
There was a Young Lady of Norway ∙ There was an Old Man of the Isles ∙ There was an Old Man with a beard ∙ There was an Old Man who said, How ∙ There was a young Lady of Ryde ∙ There was a young Lady of Tyre ∙ There was an Old Man in a pew ∙ There was an Old Man in a boat ∙ There was an Old Person of Philae ∙ There was an Old Man with a nose ∙ There was a Young Lady of Russia ∙ There was an Old Man with a gong ∙ The Owl and the Pussy-cat
Love and friendship ∙ A day dream ∙ ‘Harp of wild and dream-like strain’ ∙ ‘Sleep brings no joy to me’ ∙ ‘Tell me tell me smiling child’ ∙ ‘High waving heather ’neath stormy blasts bending’ ∙ The caged bird ∙ ‘No coward soul is mine’
CECIL FRANCES ALEXANDER (1818–95)
Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary ∙ Maker of Heaven and Earth ∙ There is a green hill far away
Longing ∙ Lines from ‘Parting’ (‘Far, far from each other’) ∙ Lines from ‘The river’ (‘My pent-up tears oppress my brain’) ∙ Lines from The New Sirens (‘Strew no more red roses, maidens’) ∙ West London ∙ Dover beach
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI (1828–82)
Lovesight ∙ Silent noon ∙ Passion and worship ∙ Heart’s haven ∙ Death-in-love ∙ Love’s last gift ∙ The one hope
A birthday ∙ A Christmas carol ∙ ‘Your brother has a falcon’ ∙ ‘Crying, my little one, footsore and weary?’ ∙ ‘I dug and dug amongst the snow’ ∙ ‘When a mounting skylark sings’ ∙ ‘Blind from my birth’ ∙ ‘Love me, – I love you’ ∙ ‘Good-bye in fear, good-bye in sorrow’ ∙ ‘Roses blushing red and white’ ∙ ‘Oh fair to see’ ∙ Song (‘When I am dead, my dearest’) ∙ ‘Ferry me across the water’
‘Beautiful Soup, so rich and green’ ∙ Jabberwocky
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE (1837–1909)
Rondel ∙ A reiver’s neck-verse ∙ The winds ∙ A match ∙ Cradle Song
Great things ∙ Summer schemes ∙ Her song ∙ Weathers ∙ Lover to mistress ∙ Come not; Yet come! ∙ Without, not within her ∙ That moment ∙ *Her temple ∙ Paying calls ∙ Where the picnic was ∙ *The oxen ∙ The master and the leaves ∙ Voices from things growing in a churchyard ∙ Exeunt omnes ∙ A young man’s exhortation ∙ Ditty ∙ Budmouth dears ∙ The comet at Yell’ham ∙ Shortening days at the Homestead ∙ The sigh ∙ Former beauties ∙ Transformations ∙ Regret not me ∙ When I set out for Lyonnesse ∙ Waiting both ∙ The phantom horsewoman ∙ After reading Psalms XXXIX, XL, etc. ∙ The sergeant’s song ∙ To Lizbie Browne ∙ The clock of the years ∙ While drawing in a churchyard ∙ *Proud songsters ∙ Childhood among the ferns ∙ Before and after summer ∙ The self-unseeing ∙ Overlooking the River Stour ∙ Channel firing ∙ In the mind’s eye ∙ The best she could ∙ Epeisodia ∙ Amabel ∙ He abjures love ∙ Let me enjoy ∙ A spot ∙ The market-girl ∙ I look into my glass ∙ It never looks like summer ∙ At a lunar eclipse ∙ Life laughs onward ∙ I need not go ∙ At Middle-Field gate in February ∙ Two lips ∙ 1967 ∙ For Life I had never cared greatly ∙ I said to Love ∙ At day-close in November ∙ Midnight on the Great Western ∙ Wagtail and baby ∙ The little old table ∙ The choirmaster’s burial ∙ At the railway station, Upway ∙ Before life and after ∙ The oxen ∙ The darkling thrush
W(ILLIAM) H(ENRY) HUDSON (1841–1922)
From Chapter XXII (‘Boyhood’s End’) of Far Away and Long Ago.
Thou didst delight my eyes ∙ Noel: Christmas Eve, 1913 ∙ ‘Since we loved’ ∙ Nightingales
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS (1844–89)
God’s grandeur ∙ Heaven-Haven ∙ Spring and fall ∙ Spring ∙ Hurrahing in harvest
W(ILLIAM) E(RNEST) HENLEY (1849–1903)
Echoes XLV. To W.B. ∙ Echoes XVIII. To A.D. ∙ Echoes XXV ∙ To K. de M. ∙ Echoes VII ∙ Echoes XXXVIII
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON (1850–94)
Keepsake Mill ∙ *The swing ∙ The vagabond ∙ ‘Let Beauty awake in the morn from beautiful dreams’ ∙ ‘I will make you brooches and toys for your delight’ ∙ Youth and love ∙ The unforgotten ∙ ‘The infinite shining heavens’ ∙ To the tune of Wandering Willie ∙ ‘Bright is the ring of words’ ∙ ‘I have trod the upward and the downward slope’ ∙ My bed is a boat ∙ The wind ∙ Pirate story ∙ Bed in summer ∙ Where go the boats? ∙ My shadow ∙ Windy nights ∙ My ship and I ∙ Escape at bedtime ∙ A good boy
Symphony in yellow ∙ Requiescat
A(LFRED) E(DWARD) HOUSMAN (1859–1936)
*‘Loveliest of trees, the cherry now’ ∙ *‘When I was one-and-twenty’ ∙ ‘There pass the careless people’ ∙ *Bredon Hill ∙ *‘The street sounds to the soldiers’ tread’ ∙ *‘On the idle hill of summer’ ∙ ‘White in the moon the long road lies’ ∙ *‘Think no more, lad; laugh, be jolly’ ∙ *‘Into my heart an air that kills’ ∙ *‘The lads in their hundreds to Ludlow come in for the fair’ ∙ ‘On Wenlock Edge the wood’s in trouble’ ∙ ‘From far, from eve and morning’ ∙ *‘Is my team ploughing’ ∙ ‘Oh, when I was in love with you’ ∙ ‘Clunton and Clunbury’ ∙ ‘We’ll to the woods no more’ ∙ *‘Along the field as we came by’ ∙ *‘The half-moon westers low, my love’ ∙ ‘In the morning, in the morning’ ∙ ‘The sigh that heaves the grasses’ ∙ ‘Oh see how thick the goldcup flowers’ ∙ Fancy’s knell ∙ *‘With rue my heart is laden’ ∙ *‘Look not in my eyes, for fear’ ∙ ‘Oh fair enough are sky and plain’ ∙ ‘When the lad for longing sighs’ ∙ *The Lent lily ∙ ‘Twice a week the winter thorough’ ∙ ‘If truth in hearts that perish’ ∙ ‘You smile upon your friend to-day’ ∙ ‘When smoke stood up from Ludlow’ ∙ ‘Far in a western brookland’ ∙ ‘’Tis time, I think, by Wenlock town’ ∙ Reveille ∙ March ∙ ‘Farewell to barn and stack and tree’ ∙ ‘He would not stay for me; and who can wonder?’ ∙ ‘Because I liked you better’
L’oiseau bleu ∙ Hush ∙ In spring ∙ Song (‘Thy hand in mine’) ∙ Chillingham, I ∙ Chillingham, II
A(RTHUR) C(HRISTOPHER) BENSON (1862–1925)
Coronation ode ∙ The song (‘Speak, speak, music’) ∙ In the dawn
Drake’s drum ∙ The Old Superb ∙ Gavotte
‘When the cabin port-holes are dark and green’ ∙ ‘The Camel’s hump is an ugly lump’ ∙ ‘I keep six honest serving-men’ ∙ ‘I am the Most Wise Baviaan’ ∙ ‘I’ve never sailed the Amazon’ ∙ Danny Deever ∙ ‘The People of the Eastern Ice’
W(ILLIAM) B(UTLER) YEATS (1865–1939)
He thinks of those who have spoken evil of his beloved ∙ He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven ∙ The folly of being comforted ∙ The lake isle of Innisfree ∙ When you are old ∙ He reproves the curlew ∙ The lover mourns for the loss of love ∙ The withering of the boughs ∙ He hears the cry of the sedge ∙ Down by the salley gardens ∙ Byzantium ∙ Long-legged fly
Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae ∙ Moritura ∙ Cease smiling, Dear ∙ Autumnal ∙ O mors! Quam amara est memoria tua homini pacem habenti in substantiis suis ∙ Exile ∙ *In Spring ∙ Spleen ∙ *Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam ∙ A coronal ∙ Beata solitudo ∙ Seraphita
Matilda ∙ Henry King ∙ The early morning ∙ Ha’nacker Mill ∙ The night ∙ My own country ∙ The birds ∙ Tarantella
W(ILLIAM) H(ENRY) DAVIES (1871–1940)
Thunderstorms ∙ This night ∙ Leisure ∙ A great time ∙ Money ∙ Love’s caution ∙ Night wanderers ∙ Beggar’s song
Arabia ∙ Tired Tim ∙ Alas, alack! ∙ Mrs. MacQueen ∙ The dunce ∙ Full moon ∙ Miss T. ∙ King David ∙ *Lovelocks ∙ The old house ∙ Some one ∙ Five eyes ∙ The song of shadows ∙ The bells ∙ *Silver ∙ Araby ∙ Now silent falls ∙ Now all the roads ∙ The flower ∙ An epitaph ∙ The hare ∙ The buckle ∙ A song of Enchantment ∙ Autumn ∙ Vigil ∙ Tit for tat ∙ ‘Here lyeth our infant, Alice Rodd’ ∙ ‘Here sleep I’ ∙ ‘Three sisters rest beneath’ ∙ ‘Here lies Thomas Logge’ ∙ ‘Just a span and half a span’ ∙ ‘No Voice to scold’ ∙ ‘Stranger, here lies’ ∙ ‘Be very quiet now’
G(ILBERT) K(EITH) CHESTERTON (1874–1936)
WILFRID WILSON GIBSON (1878–1962)
Northumberland ∙ Merry Eye ∙ Black Stitchel ∙ Stow-on-the-Wold ∙ Otterburn
Sea-fever ∙ St Mary’s bells ∙ Vagabond ∙ The Chief Centurions ∙ Lollingdon Downs XX (‘Up on the downs the red-eyed kestrels hover’) ∙ On Eastnor Knoll ∙ Trade Winds ∙ Tewkesbury Road ∙ An old song re-sung ∙ Sorrow o’ Mydath ∙ Captain Stratton’s Fancy ∙ London Town ∙ The seal man
The penny whistle ∙ Digging ∙ Bright clouds ∙ Lights out ∙ Will you come? ∙ The trumpet ∙ Snow ∙ Out in the dark
Chamber Music V (‘Lean out of the window’) ∙ Chamber Music I (‘Strings in the earth and air’) ∙ Chamber Music VIII (‘Who goes amid the green wood’) ∙ Chamber Music X (‘Bright cap and streamers’) ∙ Chamber Music XVI (‘O cool is the valley now’) ∙ Chamber Music XXXI (‘O, it was out by Donnycarney’) ∙ *Chamber Music XXXII (‘Rain has fallen all the day’) ∙ Chamber Music XXXIII (‘Now, O now, in this brown land’) ∙ Tilly ∙ Watching the needleboats at San Sabba ∙ A flower given to my daughter ∙ She weeps over Rahoon ∙ Tutto è sciolto ∙ On the beach at Fontana ∙ Simples ∙ Flood ∙ Nightpiece ∙ Alone ∙ A memory of the players in a mirror at midnight ∙ Bahnhofstrasse ∙ A prayer ∙ Chamber Music XXXIV (‘Sleep now, O sleep now’) ∙ Chamber Music XXXVI (‘I hear an army charging upon the land’) ∙ from Finnegans Wake (‘Nuvoletta in her lightdress’) ∙ from Ulysses (‘Solitary hotel in mountain pass’)
JAMES ELROY FLECKER (1884–1915)
To a poet a thousand years hence
The soldier ∙ Song (‘All suddenly the wind comes soft’) ∙ The Dead ∙ The Old Vicarage, Grantchester
DAME EDITH SITWELL (1887–1964)
Madam Mouse trots ∙ Aubade ∙ Sir Beelzebub ∙ By the lake ∙ Scotch rhapsody ∙ Popular song ∙ from Canto 18 of The Sleeping Beauty (‘When green as a river was the barley’) ∙ Canto 19 from The Sleeping Beauty (‘Through gilded trellises’) ∙ Old Sir Faulk ∙ Still falls the Rain
Song (‘Only the wanderer’) ∙ Poem (‘Horror follows Horror within me’) ∙ What evil coil
Desire in spring ∙ The ships of Arcady ∙ To one dead ∙ Song (‘Nothing but sweet music wakes’) ∙ Nocturne
Spring offensive ∙ The kind ghosts ∙ Anthem for doomed youth ∙ But I was looking at the permanent stars ∙ The next war ∙ Sonnet. On seeing a piece of our heavy artillery brought into action ∙ Futility ∙ The parable of the old man and the young ∙ The end ∙ At a Calvary near the Ancre ∙ Strange meeting ∙ From my diary, July 1914
A riddle (‘There’s pairt o’ it young’) ∙ A laddie’s sang ∙ Nightmare ∙ Black day ∙ Bed-time ∙ Slaughter ∙ A riddle (‘It was your faither and mither’) ∙ The larky lad ∙ Who are these children? ∙ Supper ∙ The children ∙ The auld aik ∙ Ballad (‘O! shairly ye hae seen my love’)
W(YSTAN) H(UGH) AUDEN (1907–73)
O lurcher-loving collier ∙ Night Mail ∙ Prologue (‘They are our past and our future’) ∙ Our hunting fathers ∙ Song (‘Underneath the abject willow’) ∙ ‘Let the florid music praise’ ∙ Autumn song ∙ On this island ∙ Nocturne from The Dog beneath the Skin (‘Now through night’s caressing grip’) ∙ His Excellency ∙ ‘To lie flat on the back with the knees flexed’ ∙ Song (‘Fish in the unruffled lakes’) ∙ Some say that love’s a little boy ∙ ‘Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone’ ∙ ‘O the valley in the summer where I and my John’ ∙ ‘Driver drive faster and make a good run’ (Calypso) ∙ Anthem for St Cecilia’s day ∙ As I walked out one evening ∙ Refugee blues (‘Say this city has ten million souls’) ∙ Lauds ∙ ‘What’s in your mind, my dove, my coney’ ∙ ‘Eyes look into the well’ ∙ ‘Carry her over the water’ ∙ Elegy for J.F.K. ∙ In memoriam L. K.-A. ∙ Rimbaud ∙ Lullaby (‘Lay your sleeping head, my love’)
Do not go gentle into that good night
Song (‘Oh journeyman, Oh journeyman’) ∙ Compassion ∙ The dancer
Song: The heart’s assurance ∙ Remember your lovers
* An asterisk in the list above indicates that the poem appears more than once in the book.