# Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900

THE OXFORD BOOK OF ENGLISH VERSE
The
Oxford Book
Of English Verse
1250—1900
Impression of 1931 First edition, 1900
The
Oxford Book
Of English Verse
1250 - 1900
Chosen & Edited by
Arthur Quiller-Couch
Oxford
At the Clarendon Press
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
TO
THE PRESIDENT
FELLOWS AND SCHOLARS
OF
TRINITY COLLEGE OXFORD
A HOUSE OF LEARNING
ANCIENT LIBERAL HUMANE
AND MY MOST KINDLY NURSE
PREFACE
FOR this Anthology I have tried to range over the whole field of English Verse from the beginning, or from the Thirteenth Century to this closing year of the Nineteenth, and to choose the best. Nor have I sought in these Islands only, but wheresoever the Muse has followed the tongue which among living tongues she most delights to honour. To bring home and render so great a spoil compendiously has been my capital difficulty. It is for the reader to judge if I have so managed it as to serve those who already love poetry and to implant that love in some young minds not yet initiated.
My scheme is simple. I have arranged the poets as nearly as possible in order of birth, with such groupings of anonymous pieces as seemed convenient. For convenience, too, as well as to avoid a dispute-royal, I have gathered the most of the Ballads into the middle of the Seventeenth Century; where they fill a languid interval between two winds of inspiration—the Italian dying down with Milton and the French following at the heels of the restored Royalists. For convenience, again, I have set myself certain rules of spelling. In the very earliest poems inflection and spelling are structural, and to modernize is to destroy. But ​as old inflections fade into modern the old spelling becomes less and less vital, and has been brought (not, I hope, too abruptly) into line with that sanctioned by use and familiar. To do this seemed wiser than to discourage many readers for the sake of diverting others by a scent of antiquity which—to be essential—should breathe of something rarer than an odd arrangement of type. But there are scholars whom I cannot expect to agree with me; and to conciliate them I have excepted Spenser and Milton from the rule.
Glosses of archaic and otherwise difficult words are given at the foot of the page: but the text has not been disfigured with reference-marks. And rather than make the book unwieldy I have eschewed notes—reluctantly when some obscure passage or allusion seemed to ask for a timely word; with more equanimity when the temptation was to criticize or ‘appreciate.’ For the function of the anthologist includes criticizing in silence.
Care has been taken with the texts. But I have sometimes thought it consistent with the aim of the book to prefer the more beautiful to the better attested reading. I have often excised weak or superfluous stanzas when sure that excision would improve; and have not hesitated to extract a few stanzas from a long poem when persuaded that they could stand alone as a lyric. The apology for such experiments can only lie in their success: but the risk is one which, in my judgement, the anthologist ought to take. A few small corrections have been made, but only when they were quite obvious.
​The numbers chosen are either lyrical or epigrammatic. Indeed I am mistaken if a single epigram included fails to preserve at least some faint thrill of the emotion through which it had to pass before the Muse’s lips let it fall, with however exquisite deliberation. But the lyrical spirit is volatile and notoriously hard to bind with definitions; and seems to grow wilder with the years. With the anthologist—as with the fisherman who knows the fish at the end of his sea-line—the gift, if he have it, comes by sense, improved by practice. The definition, if he be clever enough to frame one, comes by after-thought. I don't know that it helps, and am sure that it may easily mislead.
Having set my heart on choosing the best, I resolved not to be dissuaded by common objections against anthologies—that they repeat one another until the proverb δὶς ἤ τρὶς τὰ καλά loses all application—or perturbed if my judgement should often agree with that of good critics. The best is the best, though a hundred judges have declared it so; nor had it been any feat to search out and insert the second-rate merely because it happened to be recondite. To be sure, a man must come to such a task as mine haunted by his youth and the favourites he loved in days when he had much enthusiasm but little reading.
A deeper import Lurks in the legend told my infant years Than lies upon that truth we live to learn.
Few of my contemporaries can erase—or would wish to erase—the dye their minds took from the late Mr. Palgrave’s ​Golden Treasury: and he who has returned to it again and again with an affection born of companionship on many journeys must remember not only what the Golden Treasury includes, but the moment when this or that poem appealed to him, and even how it lies on the page. To Mr. Bullen’s Lyrics from the Elizabethan Song Books and his other treasuries I own a more advised debt. Nor am I free of obligation to anthologies even more recent—to Archbishop Trench’s Household Book of Poetry, Mr. Locker-Lampson’s Lyra Elegantiarum, Mr. Miles’ Poets and Poetry of the Century, Mr. Beeching’s Paradise of English Poetry, Mr. Henley’s English Lyrics, Mrs. Sharp’s Lyra Celtica, Mr. Yeats’ Book of Irish Verse, and Mr. Churton Collins’ Treasury of Minor British Poetry: though my rule has been to consult these after making my own choice. Yet I can claim that the help derived from them—though gratefully owned—bears but a trifling proportion to the labour, special and desultory, which has gone to the making of my book.
For the anthologist’s is not quite the dilettante business for which it is too often and ignorantly derided. I say this, and immediately repent; since my wish is that the reader should in his own pleasure quite forget the editor’s labour, which too has been pleasant: that, standing aside, I may believe this book has made the Muses’ access easier when, in the right hour, they come to him to uplift or to console—
ἄκλητος μὲν ἔγωγε μένοιμί κεν ἐς δὲ καλεύντων θαρσήσας Μοίσαισι σὺν ἁμετέραισιν ἱκοίμαν.
CONTENTS
307-324. John Milton. b. 1608, d. 1674 311-347
325-328. Sir John Suckling. b. 1609, d. 1642 347-350
329. Sir Richard Fanshawe. b. 1608, d. 1666 350
330-333. William Cartwright. b. 1611, d. 1643 351-353
334. James Graham, Marquis of Montrose. b. 1612, d. 1650 353-354
335. Thomas Jordan. b. ? 1612, d. 1685 354-355
336-342. Richard Crashaw. b. ? 1613, d. 1649 355-370
343-348. Richard Lovelace. b. 1618, d. 1658 370-374
349-353. Abraham Cowley. b. 1618, d. 1667 374-380
354. Alexander Brome. b. 1620, d. 1666 381
355-361. Andrew Marvell. b. 1621, d. 1678 382-394
362-365. Henry Vaughan. b. 1621, d. 1695 395-399
366. John Bunyan. b. 1628, d. 1688 399
367-392. Anonymous: Ballads 400-459
393. William Strode. b. 1602, d. 1645 459
394. Thomas Stanley. b. 1625, d. 1678 460
395. Thomas D'Urfey. b. 1653, d. 1723 460-461
396. Charles Cotton. b. 1630, d. 1687 461
397. Katherine Philips ('Orinda'). b. 1631, d. 1664 462
398-402. John Dryden. b. 1631, d. 1700 462-471
403. Charles Webbe. c. 1678 472
404-405. Sir George Etherege. b. 1635, d. 1691 472-473
406. Thomas Traherne. b. ? 1637, d. 1674 473-475
407. Thomas Flatman. b. 1637, d. 1688 475-476
408. Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset. b. 1638, d. 1706 476-478
409-410. Sir Charles Sedley. b. 1639, d. 1701 479-480
411-412. Aphra Behn. b. 1640, d. 1689 480-481
413-416. John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. b. 1647, d. 1680 481-484
417-418. John Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire. b. 1649, d. 1720 485-486
419. Thomas Otway. b. 1652, d. 1685 486
420. John Oldham. b. 1653, d. 1683 487
421. John Cutts, Lord Cutts. b. 1661, d. 1707 487
422-428. Matthew Prior. b. 1664, d. 1721 488-493
429. William Walsh. b. 1663, d. 1708 493
430. Lady Grisel Baillie. b. 1665, d. 1746 494-495
431-432. William Congreve. b. 1670, d. 1729 495-496
433. Joseph Addison. b. 1672, d. 1719 496-497
434-435. Isaac Watts. b. 1674, d. 1748 497-500
436. Thomas Parnell. b. 1679, d. 1718 501
437. Allan Ramsay. b. 1686, d. 1758 501-502
438. William Oldys. b. 1687, d. 1761 503
439. John Gay. b. 1688, d. 1732 503
440-442. Alexander Pope. b. 1688, d. 1744 504-507
443. George Bubb Dodington, Lord Melcombe. b. 1691, d. 1762 508
444-445. Henry Carey. b. ? 1693, d. 1743 509-511
446-447. William Broome. d. 1745 511-512
448. James Thomson. b. 1700, d. 1748 512
449. George Lyttelton, Lord Lyttelton. b. 1709, d. 1773 512-513
450-451. Samuel Johnson. b. 1709, d. 1784 513-516
452. Richard Jago. b. 1715, d. 1781 516
453-456. Thomas Gray. b. 1716, d. 1771 516-528
457-460. William Collins. b. 1721, d. 1759 528-533
461-463. Mark Akenside. b. 1721, d. 1770 534-537
464. Tobias George Smollett. b. 1721, d. 1771 538
465. Christopher Smart. b. 1722, d. 1770 538-542
466. Jane Elliot. b. 1727, d. 1805 542-543
467-468. Oliver Goldsmith. b. 1728, d. 1774 543-544
469. Robert Cunninghame-Graham of Gartmore. b. 1735, d. 1797 544-545
470-471. William Cowper. b. 1731, d. 1800 545-547
472. James Beattie. b. 1735, d. 1803 548
473. Isobel Pagan. b. 1740, d. 1821 548-54
474. Anna Lætitia Barbauld. b. 1743, d. 1825 549-550
475. Fanny Greville. XVIII Century 550-551
476. John Logan. b. 1748, d. 1788 551-552
477. Lady Anne Lindsay. b. 1750, d. 1825 552-553
478. Sir William Jones. b. 1746, d. 1794 554
479. Thomas Chatterton. b. 1752, d. 1770 554-556
480-482. George Crabbe. b. 1754, d. 1832 556-557
483-492. William Blake. b. 1757, d. 1827 558-566
493-506. Robert Burns. b. 1759, d. 1796 566-577
507-508. Henry Rowe. b. 1750, d. 1819 578-579
509. William Lisle Bowles. b. 1762, d. 1850 579
510. Joanna Baillie. b. 1762, d. 1851 580
511. Mary Lamb. b. 1765, d. 1847 581
512. Carolina, Lady Nairne. b. 1766, d. 1845 581-582
513-514. James Hogg. b. 1770, d. 1835 582-594
515-541. William Wordsworth. b. 1770, d. 1850 594-618
542-548. Sir Walter Scott. b. 1771, d. 1832 619-628
549-555. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. b. 1772, d. 1834 628-658
556. Robert Southey. b. 1774, d. 1843 658-659
557-576. Walter Savage Landor. b. 1775, d. 1864 659-667
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