The Classic Hundred Poems: All-time Favorites

Front Cover
William Harmon
Columbia University Press, 1998 - Literary Collections - 360 pages

Here in one volume are the top one hundred poems, as determined by a survey of more than 1,000 anthologies--the poems in English most frequently anthologized, the poems with the broadest, most enduring appeal. From Shakespeare to Dickinson to Frost, from sonnets to odes to villanelles, William Harmon's Classic Hundred Poems offers a feast for poetry lovers.

This book updates the first edition by presenting the new top one hundred poems, nineteen of which were not in the first edition. The revised edition is arranged chronologically, and features new commentary and notes on verse form, as well as an index of the poems in order of popularity, notes on words and proper names, and a bibliography for each poet and each poem. A glossary of terms, author index, and index of titles and first lines are also included.

From Keats' "To Autumn," now ranked as the number-one poem in this collection, to George Herbert's "Virtue," in the hundredth spot, every poem is illuminated by Harmon's informative notes. With insights into the historical period in which each poem was written, the verse form used, and connections among poems, this is the ideal introduction to poetry, as well as a treasury for the dedicated reader.

 

Contents

ANONYMOUS
1
Edward Edward
5
Western Wind
8
SIR THOMAS WYATT 15031542
9
They Flee from Me That Sometime Did Me Seek
10
SIR WALTER RALEGH 1554?1618
12
The Nymphs Reply to the Shepherd
13
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 15541586
15
Ode to the West Wind
127
Ozymandias
131
To a Skylark
132
JOHN KEATS 17951821
137
To Autumn
139
La Belle Dame sans Merci
141
On First Looking into Chapmans Homer
144
Ode to a Nightingale
146

With How Sad Steps O Moon Thou Climbst the Skies
16
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE 15641593
18
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
19
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 15641616
21
Fear No More the Heat o the Sun
23
When to the Sessions of Sweet Silent Thought
25
Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds
26
Shall I Compare Thee to a Summers Day?
27
The Expense of Spirit in a Waste of Shame
28
That Time of Tear Thou Mayst in Me Behold
29
When Icicles Hang by the Wall
30
JOHN DONNE 15721631
31
Death Be Not Proud
32
Batter My Heart ThreePersoned God
33
At the Round Earths Imagined Corners
33
The Good Morrow
33
The Sun Rising
35
Forbidding Mourning
37
Go and Catch a Falling Star
39
BEN JONSON 15721637
41
On My First Son
42
To Celia
43
Still to Be Neat
44
ROBERT HERRICK 15911674
45
To the Virgins to Make Much of Time
46
Upon Julias Clothes
47
Delight in Disorder
48
GEORGE HERBERT 15931633
49
Love III
50
The Pulley
52
Virtue
53
THOMAS CAREW 15951639?
54
Ask Me No More Where Jove Bestows
55
EDMUND WALLER 16061687
57
Go Lovely Rose
58
JOHN MILTON 16081674
60
Lycidas
62
SIR JOHN SUCKLING 16091642
70
RICHARD LOVELACE 16181658
72
To Lucasta Going to the Wars
73
To Althea from Prison
74
ANDREW MARVELL 16211678
76
To His Coy Mistress
77
The Garden
79
HENRY VAUGHAN 16221695
82
The Retreat
83
THOMAS GRAY 17161771
85
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
86
Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes
91
WILLIAM BLAKE 17571827
93
The Tyger
94
London
96
And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time
98
The Lamb
100
Auguries of Innocence
101
ROBERT BURNS 17591796
105
A Red Red Rose
106
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 17701850
108
She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways
110
The World Is Too Much with Us
111
The Solitary Reaper
112
Composed upon Westminster Bridge September 3 1802
114
A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal
115
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 17721834
116
Kubla Khan
118
GEORGE GORDON BYRON 6TH BARON BYRON 17881824
121
So Well Go No More aRoving
123
She Walks in Beauty
124
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 17921822
125
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING 18061861
150
How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways
152
EDGAR ALLAN POE 18091849
153
To Helen
154
Annabel Lee
156
ALFRED LORD TENNYSON 18091892
159
Break Break Break
160
The Eagle
162
Ulysses
163
ROBERT BROWNING 18121889
167
My Last Duchess
168
Meeting at Night
172
HomeThoughts from Abroad
174
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH 18191861
176
The Latest Decalogue
177
JULIA WARD HOWE 18191910
179
The Battle Hymn of the Republic
180
MATTHEW ARNOLD 18221888
182
Dover Beach
183
EMILY DICKINSON 18301886
185
Because I Could Not Stop for Death
186
I Heard a Fly BuzzWhen I Died
188
A Narrow Fellow in the Grass
189
LEWIS CARROLL 18321898
191
Jabberwocky
192
THOMAS HARDY 18401928
194
The Darkling Thrush
196
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS 18441889
198
Pied Beauty
199
Spring and Fall
201
The Windhover
202
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 18651939
204
The Second Coming
205
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
207
Leda and the Swan
208
Sailing to Byzantium
210
ERNEST DOWSON 18671900
212
Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae
213
EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON 18691935
215
A Miniver Cheevy
216
Mr Floods Party
218
WALTER DE LA MARE 18731956
221
The Listeners
223
ROBERT FROST 18741963
225
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
226
Mending Wall
228
TS Eliot 18881965
230
The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock
231
WILFRED OWEN 18931918
237
Strange Meeting
238
WH Auden 19071973
240
Musée des Beaux Arts
241
THEODORE ROETHKE 19081963
243
My Papas Waltz
244
RANDALL JARRELL 19141965
246
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
247
DYLAN THOMAS 19141953
248
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
249
Fern Hill
250
A Refusal to Mourn the Death by Fire of a Child in London
253
NOTES ON THE POEMS
255
GLOSSARY OF TECHNICAL TERMS
309
FURTHER READING
323
THE POEMS IN ORDER OF POPULARITY
345
INDEX OF POETS
349
INDEX OF TITLES AND FIRST LINES
353
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
357
Copyright

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About the author (1998)

William Harmon is the James Gordon Hanes Professor of English at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the editor of The Top 500 Poems (Columbia), The Oxford Book of American Light Verse, and recent editions of A Handbook to Literature, and the author of several volumes of poetry, including winners of the Lamont Award and the William Carlos Williams Award.

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