Tennyson S Poems

Tennyson's poetry epitomizes the Victorian age, for which he became a spokesman. His finest poems are often steeped in a sensuous melancholy, as in Maud, or are chivaric, heroic and allegorical, as in The Lady of Shalot and Morte d'Arthur.

Treasury of verse by the great Victorian poet includes the famous long narrative poem, Enoch Arden, plus "The Lady of Shalott," "The Charge of the Light Brigade," "Break, break, break," "Flower in the crannied Wall" and more. Also included are excerpts from three longer works: The Princess, "Maud" and "The Brook."

Beloved for his fanciful and engrossing children’s literature, controversial for his enthusiasm for British imperialism, Rudyard Kipling remains one of the most widely read writers of Victorian and modern English literature. In addition to writing more than two dozen works of fiction, including Kim and The Jungle Book, Kipling was a prolific poet, composing verse in every classical form from the epigram to the ode. Kipling’s most distinctive gift was for ballads and narrative poems in which he drew vivid characters in universal situations, articulating profound truths in plain language. Yet he was also a subtle, affecting anatomist of the human heart, and his deep feeling for the natural world was exquisitely expressed in his verse. He was shattered by World War I, in which he lost his only son, and his work darkened in later years but never lost its extraordinary vitality. All of these aspects of Kipling’s poetry are represented in this selection, which ranges from such well-known compositions as “Mandalay” and “If” to the less-familiar, emotionally powerful, and personal epigrams he wrote in response to the war.

Tennyson s central poem is presented with an extensive introduction that provides background information on the poet and poem as well as an overview of In Memoriam s formal and thematic peculiarities, including Tennyson s use of the stanza and the poem s rhyme scheme."

Seeking to understand Tennyson's poetry as the work of a man concerned with making and then living up one of the most famous names in literature, Anna Barton offers close readings of major works from his early lyrics to his Arthurian Idylls. The laureate's keen sense of professional identity, Barton argues, forced him to grapple with modern concerns about the ethics of print in a market-driven age as he established his own responsible poetic.