Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) Read online

  The World’s Greatest Poems

  The Delphi Poetry Anthology

  Contents

  The World’s Greatest Poems

  CONTENTS OF THE COLLECTION

  LIST OF POEMS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

  LIST OF POETS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

  © Delphi Classics 2015

  Version 2

  The World’s Greatest Poems

  AN ANTHOLOGY

  By Delphi Classics, 2015

  NOTE

  When reading poetry on an eReader, it is advisable to use a small font size and landscape mode, which will allow the lines of poetry to display correctly.

  The World’s Greatest Poems

  CONTENTS OF THE COLLECTION

  The Ancients

  Homer

  Sappho

  Virgil

  Horace

  Ovid

  Medieval Poetry

  Dante Alighieri

  Geoffrey Chaucer

  John Gower

  Traditional Medieval Ballads

  Renaissance Poets

  Sir Thomas Wyatt

  Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

  George Gascoigne

  Nicholas Breton

  Anthony Munday

  Richard Edwardes

  Sir Walter Raleigh

  Sir Edward Dyer

  John Lyly

  Sir Philip Sidney

  Thomas Lodge

  George Peele

  Robert Southwell

  Samuel Daniel

  Michael Drayton

  Henry Constable

  Edmund Spenser

  William Habington

  Christopher Marlowe

  Richard Rowlands

  Thomas Nashe

  William Shakespeare: Play Extracts

  William Shakespeare: Poems

  Robert Greene

  Richard Barnfield

  Thomas Campion

  Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex

  Sir Henry Wotton

  Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford

  Ben Jonson

  John Donne

  Joshua Sylvester

  William Alexander, Earl of Stirling

  Richard Corbet

  Thomas Heywood

  Thomas Dekker

  Francis Beaumont

  John Fletcher

  John Webster

  William Drummond

  George Wither

  William Browne

  Robert Herrick

  Francis Quarles

  George Herbert

  John Milton

  Henry Vaughan

  Francis Bacon Viscount St Alban

  James Shirley

  Thomas Carew

  Sir John Suckling

  Sir William D’Avenant

  Richard Lovelace

  Edmund Waller

  William Cartwright

  James Graham, Marquis of Montrose

  Richard Crashaw

  Thomas Jordan

  Abraham Cowley

  Alexander Brome

  Andrew Marvell

  Restoration and Eighteenth Century Poets

  Earl of Rochester

  Sir Charles Sedley

  John Dryden

  Matthew Prior

  Isaac Watts

  Lady Grisel Baillie

  Joseph Addison

  Allan Ramsay

  John Gay

  Henry Carey

  Alexander Pope

  Ambrose Philips

  Colley Cibber

  James Thomson

  Thomas Gray

  George Bubb Dodington, Lord Melcombe

  William Collins

  George Sewell

  Alison Rutherford Cockburn

  Jane Elliot

  Christopher Smart

  John Logan

  Charlotte Smith

  Henry Fielding

  Charles Dibdin

  Samuel Johnson

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Robert Graham of Gartmore

  Adam Austin

  William Cowper

  Richard Brinsley Sheridan

  Anna Laetitia Barbauld

  Isobel Pagan

  Lady Anne Lindsay

  Thomas Chatterton

  Robert Burns

  Carolina Oliphant, Lady Nairne

  Alexander Ross

  John Skinner

  Michael Bruce

  George Halket

  William Hamilton of Bangour

  Hector MacNeil

  Sir William Jones

  Susanna Blamire

  Anne Hunter

  John Dunlop

  Samuel Rogers

  William Blake

  Early Nineteenth Century Poets

  John Collins

  Robert Tannahill

  William Wordsworth

  William Lisle Bowles

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Robert Southey

  Charles Lamb

  Sir Walter Scott

  James Hogg

  Robert Surtees

  Thomas Campbell

  J Campbell

  Allan Cunningham

  George Gordon, Lord Byron

  Thomas Moore

  Charles Wolfe

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  James Henry Leigh Hunt

  John Keats

  Victorian Era Poets

  Walter Savage Landor

  Thomas Hood

  Sir Aubrey De Vere

  Hartley Coleridge

  Joseph Blanco White

  George Darley

  Thomas Babington

  Macaulay, Lord Macaulay

  Sir William Edmondstoune Aytoun

  Hugh Miller

  Helen Selina, Lady Dufferin

  Charles Tennyson Turner

  Sir Samuel Ferguson

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Edward Fitzgerald

  Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Charles Kingsley

  J Wilson

  Edward Lear

  Robert Browning

  Emily Bronte

  Robert Stephen Hawker

  Coventry Patmore

  William (Johnson) Cory

  Sydney Dobell

  William Allingham

  George MacDonald

  Emily Dickinson

  Edward, Earl of Lytton

  Arthur Hugh Clough

  Matthew Arnold

  George Meredith

  Alexander Smith

  Charles Dickens

  Thomas Edward Brown

  James Thomson (B V)

  Dante Gabriel Rossetti

  Christina Georgina Rossetti

  William Morris

  John Boyle O’Reilly

  Arthur William Edgar O’Shaughnessy

  Robert Williams Buchanan

  Algernon Charles Swinburne

  William Ernest Henley

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  William Cullen Bryant

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  John Greenleaf Whittier

  Oliver Wendell Holmes

  James Russell Lowell

  Sidney Lanier

  Bret Harte

  Modern Poets

  Thomas Hardy

  Walt Whitman

  D. H. Lawrence

  W. B. Yeats

  James Joyce

  Wilfred Owen

  Edwin Arlin
gton Robinson

  The Ancients

  Homer

  The Iliad Extracts

  Opening Invocation of the Muse: Book I

  Translated by Alexander Pope

  ACHILLES’ wrath, to Greece the direful spring

  Of woes unnumber’d, heav’nly Goddess, sing!

  That wrath which hurl’d to Pluto’s gloomy reign

  The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain:

  Whose limbs, unburied on the naked shore, 5

  Devouring dogs and hungry vultures tore:

  Since great Achilles and Atrides strove,

  Such was the Sov’reign doom, and such the will of Jove!

  Declare, O Muse! in what ill-fated hour

  Sprung the fierce strife, from what offended power? 10

  Latona’s son a dire contagion spread,

  And heap’d the camp with mountains of the dead;

  The King of Men his rev’rend priest defied,

  And for the King’s offence, the people died.

  For Chryses sought with costly gifts to gain 15

  His captive daughter from the victor’s chain.

  Suppliant the venerable father stands;

  Apollo’s awful ensigns grace his hands:

  By these he begs: and, lowly bending down,

  Extends the sceptre and the laurel crown. 20

  He sued to all, but chief implored for grace

  The brother-kings of Atreus’ royal race:

  ‘Ye Kings and Warriors! may your vows be crown’d,

  And Troy’s proud walls lie level with the ground;

  May Jove restore you, when your toils are o’er, 25

  Safe to the pleasures of your native shore.

  But oh! relieve a wretched parent’s pain,

  And give Chryseïs to these arms again;

  If mercy fail, yet let my presents move,

  And dread avenging Phœbus, son of Jove.’ 30

  The Greeks in shouts their joint assent declare,

  The Priest to rev’rence and release the Fair.

  Not so Atrides: he, with kingly pride,

  Repuls’d the sacred sire, and thus replied:

  ‘Hence on thy life, and fly these hostile plains, 35

  Nor ask, presumptuous, what the King detains:

  Hence, with thy laurel crown, and golden rod,

  Nor trust too far those ensigns of thy God.

  Mine is thy daughter, Priest, and shall remain;

  And prayers, and tears, and bribes, shall plead in vain; 40

  Till time shall rifle ev’ry youthful grace,

  And age dismiss her from my cold embrace,

  In daily labours of the loom employ’d,

  Or doom’d to deck the bed she once enjoy’d.

  Hence then! to Argos shall the maid retire, 45

  Far from her native soil, and weeping sire.’

  The trembling priest along the shore return’d,

  And in the anguish of a father mourn’d.

  Disconsolate, not daring to complain,

  Silent he wander’d by the sounding main: 50

  Till, safe at distance, to his God he prays,

  The God who darts around the world his rays.

  ‘O Smintheus! sprung from fair Latona’s line,

  Thou guardian power of Cilla the divine,

  Thou source of light! whom Tenedos adores, 55

  And whose bright presence gilds thy Chrysa’s shores;

  If e’er with wreaths I hung thy sacred fane,

  Or fed the flames with fat of oxen slain,

  God of the silver bow! thy shafts employ,

  Avenge thy servant, and the Greeks destroy.’ 60

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  Wind Metaphor Speech: Book VI

  Translated by William Cowper

  To whom the illustrious Lycian Chief replied.

  Why asks brave Diomede of my descent?

  For, as the leaves, such is the race of man.

  The wind shakes down the leaves, the budding grove

  Soon teems with others, and in spring they grow.

  So pass mankind. One generation meets

  Its destined period, and a new succeeds.

  But since thou seem’st desirous to be taught

  My pedigree, whereof no few have heard,

  Know that in Argos, in the very lap

  Of Argos, for her steed-grazed meadows famed,

  Stands Ephyra; there Sisyphus abode,

  Shrewdest of human kind; Sisyphus, named

  Æolides. Himself a son begat,

  Glaucus, and he Bellerophon, to whom

  The Gods both manly force and beauty gave.

  Him Prœtus (for in Argos at that time

  Prœtus was sovereign, to whose sceptre Jove

  Had subjected the land) plotting his death,

  Contrived to banish from his native home.

  For fair Anteia, wife of Prœtus, mad

  Through love of young Bellerophon, him oft

  In secret to illicit joys enticed;

  But she prevail’d not o’er the virtuous mind

  Discrete of whom she wooed; therefore a lie

  Framing, she royal Prœtus thus bespake.

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  Hector’s Farewell of His Wife Andromache and Son: Book VI

  Translated by Alexander Pope

  He said, and pass’d with sad presaging heart

  To seek his spouse, his soul’s far dearer part;

  At home he sought her, but he sought in vain:

  She, with one maid of all her menial train, 465

  Had thence retired; and, with her second joy,

  The young Astyanax, the hope of Troy,

  Pensive she stood on Ilion’s tow’ry height,

  Beheld the war, and sicken’d at the sight;

  There her sad eyes in vain her lord explore, 470

  Or weep the wounds her bleeding country bore.

  But he who found not whom his soul desired,

  Whose virtue charm’d him as her beauty fired,

  Stood in the gates, and asked what way she bent

  Her parting steps? If to the fane she went, 475

  Where late the mourning matrons made resort;

  Or sought her sisters in the Trojan court?

  ‘Not to the court’ (replied th’ attendant train),

  ‘Nor, mixed with matrons, to Minerva’s fane:

  To Ilion’s steepy tower she bent her way, 480

  To mark the fortunes of the doubtful day.

  Troy fled, she heard, before the Grecian sword:

  She heard, and trembled for her distant lord;

  Distracted with surprise, she seemed to fly,

  Fear on her cheek, and sorrow in her eye. 485

  The nurse attended with her infant boy,

  The young Astyanax, the hope of Troy.’

  Hector, this heard, return’d without delay;

  Swift thro’ the town he trod his former way,

  Thro’ streets of palaces and walks of state; 490

  And met the mourner at the Scæan gate.

  With haste to meet him sprung the joyful fair,

  His blameless wife, Eëtion’s wealthy heir

  (Cicilian Thebé great Eëtion sway’d,

  And Hippoplacus’ wide-extended shade): 495

  The nurse stood near, in whose embraces press’d,

  His only hope hung smiling at her breast,

  Whom each soft charm and early grace adorn,

  Fair as the new-born that gilds the morn.

  To this lov’d infant Hector gave the name 500

  Scamandrius, from Scamander’s honour’d stream:

  Astyanax the Trojans call’d the boy,

  From his great father, the defence of Troy.

  Silent the warrior smil’d, and, pleas’d, resign’d

  To tender passions all his mighty m
ind: 505

  His beauteous Princess cast a mournful look,

  Hung on his hand, and then dejected spoke;

  Her bosom labour’d with a boding sigh,

  And the big tear stood trembling in her eye.

  ‘Too daring Prince! ah, whither dost thou run? 510

  Ah too forgetful of thy wife and son!

  And think’st thou not how wretched we shall be,

  A widow I, a helpless orphan he!

  For sure such courage length of life denies,

  And thou must fall, thy virtue’s sacrifice. 515

  Greece in her single heroes strove in vain;

  Now hosts oppose thee, and thou must be slain!

  Oh grant me, Gods! ere Hector meets his doom,

  All I can ask of Heav’n, an early tomb!

  So shall my days in one sad tenor run, 520

  And end with sorrows as they first begun.

  No parent now remains, my griefs to share,

  No father’s aid, no mother’s tender care.

  The fierce Achilles wrapt our walls in fire,

  Laid Thebé waste, and slew my warlike sire! 525

  His fate compassion in the victor bred;

  Stern as he was, he yet revered the dead,

  His radiant arms preserv’d from hostile spoil,

  And laid him decent on the funeral pile;

  Then raised a mountain where his bones were burn’d; 530

  The mountain nymphs the rural tomb adorn’d;

  Jove’s sylvan daughters bade their elms bestow

  A barren shade, and in his honour grow.

  ‘By the same arm my sev’n brave brothers fell;

  In one sad day beheld the gates of Hell; 535

  While the fat herds and snowy flocks they fed,

  Amid their fields the hapless heroes bled!

  My mother lived to bear the victor’s bands,

  The Queen of Hippoplacia’s sylvan lands:

  Redeem’d too late, she scarce beheld again 540

  Her pleasing empire and her native plain,

  When, ah! oppress’d by life-consuming woe,

  She fell a victim to Diana’s bow.

  ‘Yet while my Hector still survives, I see

  My father, mother, brethren, all, in thee. 545

  Alas! my parents, brothers, kindred, all,

  Once more will perish if my Hector fall.

  Thy wife, thy infant, in thy danger share;

  Oh prove a husband’s and a father’s care!

  That quarter most the skilful Greeks annoy, 550