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
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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