Contents
The Middle Ages (To 1485) 1
Medieval English 17
Old and Middle English Prosody 21
old english poetry 24
CÆDMON’S HYMN 24
THE DREAM OF THE ROOD 24
BEOWULF 28
THE BATTLE OF MALDON 66
AN OLD ENGLISH RIDDLE 72
The Bow 73
GEOFFREY CHAUCER (ca. 1343–1400) 74
the canterbury tales 79
The General Prologue 81
The Wife of Bath’s Prologue 103
The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale 124
The Introduction 124
The Prologue 126
The Tale 129
The Epilogue 139
The Nun’s Priest’s Tale 140
The Miller’s Tale 155
The Introduction 155
The Tale 157
The Parson’s Tale 172
The Introduction 172
[The Remedy Against Lechery] 174
Chaucer’s Retraction 177
lyrics and occasional verse 178
To Rosamond 178
To His Scribe Adam 179
Complaint to His Purse 179
Merciless Beauty 180
Gentilesse 181
Truth 182
SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT (ca. 1375–1400) 183
PIERS PLOWMAN (B Text, ca. 1377) 239
The Prologue 241
Passus I 243
MIDDLE ENGLISH LYRICS 249
Fowls in the Frith 250
Alison 250
My Lief Is Faren in Londe 251
Western Wind 251
I Have a Young Sister 252
Spring Has Come with Love 252
The Cuckoo Song 253
Tell Me, Wight in the Broom 254
The Henpecked Husband 254
In Praise of Brunettes 255
The Appreciative Drinker 255
A Charm Against the Night Goblin 256
The Blacksmiths 256
I Am of Ireland 257
Sunset on Calvary 257
I Sing of a Maiden 257
Adam Lay Bound 258
The Corpus Christi Carol 258
Earth Took of Earth 258
THE SECOND SHEPHERDS’ PLAY (ca. 1385) 259
EVERYMAN (ca. 1485) 281
POPULAR BALLADS 303
Lord Randall 306
Edward 306
Barbara Allan 308
The Wife of Usher’s Well 309
The Three Ravens 310
Bonny George Campbell 311
Sir Patrick Spens 311
The Bonny Earl of Murray 313
Hind Horn 313
Thomas Rhymer 315
Robin Hood and the Three Squires 317
Judas 320
St. Steven and King Herod 321
SIR THOMAS MALORY (ca. 1405–1471) 322
Morte Darthur 324
[The Death of Arthur] 324
The Sixteenth Century (1485–1603) 331
views of man and society 349
SIR THOMAS MORE (1478–1535) 350
Utopia 352
Book I 352
Book II: 1. Their Country and Agriculture 357
Book II: 7. Their Gold and Silver, and How They Keep It 359
Book II: 12. Their Marriage Customs 361
Book II: 16. The Religion of the Utopians 362
SIR THOMAS HOBY (1530–1566) 369
The Courtier 370
Book I: [Grace] 370
Book IV: [Love] 372
RICHARD HOOKER (1554–1600) 384
The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity 385
The Preface: [On Moderation in Controversy] 385
Book I, Chapter 3: [The Law of Nature] 389
Book I, Chapter 8: [On Common Sense] 390
Book I, Chapter 9: [Nature, Righteousness, and Sin] 391
Book I, Chapter 10: [The Foundations of Society] 392
Book I, Chapter 12: [The Need for Law] 394
SIR JOHN DAVIES (1569–1626) 394
Orchestra 395
SIR THOMAS WYATT THE ELDER (1503–1542) 404
The Long Love That in My Thought Doth Harbor 405
Farewell, Love 406
I Find No Peace 406
My Galley Charged with Forgetfulness 407
Like to These Unmeasurable Mountains 407
My Lute, Awake! 408
They Flee from Me 409
Tangled I Was in Love’s Snare 409
Mine Own John Poins 410
HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY (1517–1547) 413
Love, That Doth Reign and Live Within My Thought 414
The Soote Season 414
Alas! So All Things Now Do Hold Their Peace 415
Set Me Whereas the Sun Doth Parch the Green 415
My Friend, the Things That Do Attain 416
The Fourth Book of Virgil 416
[The Hunt] 416
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY (1554–1586) 418
Astrophel and Stella 420
1 (“Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show”) 420
5 (“It is most true that eyes are formed to serve”) 420
6 (“Some lovers speak, when they their Muses entertain”) 421
31 (“With how sad steps, Oh Moon, thou climb’st the skies!”) 421
39 (“Come sleep! Oh sleep, the certain knot of peace”) 422
41 (“Having this day my horse, my hand, my lance”) 422
74 (“I never drank of Aganippe well”) 422
Thou Blind Man’s Mark 423
Leave Me, O Love 423
Ye Goatherd Gods 424
An Apology for Poetry 426
EDMUND SPENSER (1552–1599) 442
The Shepheardes Calender 444
October 444
The Faerie Queene 449
A Letter of the Authors 450
Book I, Canto I 454
Book I, Canto II 466
Book I, Canto XI 475
Book I, Canto XII 487
Book II, Canto XII [The Bower of Bliss] 496
Book III, Canto VI [The Garden of Adonis] 506
Book VII, Canto VI 510
Book VII, Canto VII 512
Book VII, Canto VIII 525
Amoretti 525
Sonnet 1 (“Happy ye leaves when as those lilly hands”) 525
Sonnet 37 (“What guyle is this, that those her golden tresses”) 526
Sonnet 68 (“Most glorious Lord of lyfe, that on this day”) 526
Sonnet 70 (“Fresh spring the herald of loves mighty king”) 526
Sonnet 75 (“One day I wrote her name upon the strand”) 527
Sonnet 79 (“Men call you fayre, and you doe credit it”) 527
Epithalamion 527
An Hymne in Honour of Beautie 537
sixteenth-century lyrics 542
JOHN SKELTON (ca. 1460–1529) 544
Mannerly Margery Milk and Ale 544
RICHARD EDWARDS (ca. 1523–1566) 545
Amantium Irae Amoris Redintegratio Est 545
GEORGE GASCOIGNE (1539–1578) 546
Gascoigne’s Lullaby 546
SIR EDWARD DYER (1543–1607) 548
My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is 548
SIR WALTER RALEGH (1552–1618) 549
The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd 550
The Lie 550
Farewell, False Love 552
JOHN LYLY (1554–1606) 553
Cupid and My Campaspe 553
GEORGE PEELE (1556–1596) 554
Fair and Fair 554
CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE (ca. 1558–1586) 555
Tichborne’s Elegy 555
ROBERT SOUTHWELL (1561–1595) 556
The Burning Babe 556
SAMUEL DANIEL (1562–1619) 557
Delia 557
33 (“When men shall find thy flower, thy glory pass”) 557
45 (“Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night”) 557
46 (“Let others sing of knights and paladins”) 558
Ulysses and the Siren 558
MICHAEL DRAYTON (1563–1631) 560
Since There’s No Help 560
THOMAS NASHE (1567–1601) 560
Spring, the Sweet Spring 561
A Litany in Time of Plague 561
THOMAS CAMPION (1567–1620) 562
My Sweetest Lesbia 563
When to Her Lute Corinna Sings 563
When Thou Must Home to Shades of Underground 564
Rose-cheeked Laura 564
What If a Day 565
Never Love Unless You Can 565
There Is a Garden in Her Face 566
ANONYMOUS LYRICS 566
Back and Side Go Bare, Go Bare 566
Though Amaryllis Dance in Green 568
Come Away, Come, Sweet Love! 568
Thule, the Period of Cosmography 569
Madrigal (“My Love in her attire doth show her wit”) 570
Weep You No More, Sad Fountains 570
The Silver Swan 570
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE (1564–1593) 572
Hero and Leander 573
The First Sestiad 573
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love 578
The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Dr. Faustus 578
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564–1616) 629
songs from the plays 631
When Daisies Pied 631
The Woosel Cock So Black of Hue 632
Tell Me Where Is Fancy Bred 632
Sigh No More, Ladies 633
Under the Greenwood Tree 633
Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind 634
It Was a Lover and His Lass 634
Oh Mistress Mine 635
Take, Oh, Take Those Lips Away 635
Hark, Hark! the Lark 635
Fear No More the Heat o’ the Sun 636
When Daffodils Begin to Peer 636
Full Fathom Five 637
Where the Bee Sucks, There Suck I 637
sonnets 638
18 (“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”) 638
29 (“When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes”) 638
30 (“When to the sessions of sweet silent thought”) 639
55 (“Not marble, nor the gilded monuments”) 639
56 (“Sweet love, renew thy force; be it not said”) 640
60 (“Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore”) 640
71 (“No longer mourn for me when I am dead”) 641
73 (“That time of year thou mayst in me behold”) 641
97 (“How like a winter hath my absence been”) 641
98 (“From you have I been absent in the spring”) 642
106 (“When in the chronicle of wasted time”) 642
107 (“Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul”) 643
116 (“Let me not to the marriage of true minds”) 643
118 (“Like as, to make our appetites more keen”) 644
129 (“Th’ expense of spirit in a waste of shame”) 644
130 (“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”) 645
138 (“When my love swears that she is made of truth”) 645
144 (“Two loves I have of comfort and despair”) 646
146 (“Poor soul, the center of my sinful earth”) 646
The Phoenix and the Turtle 647
The First Part of King Henry the Fourth 649
topics in sixteenth-century literature 720
ORDER AND DEGREE 720
The Book of Homilies 721
An Exhortation Concerning Good Order and Obedience to Rulers and Magistrates 721
William Shakespeare: [Ulysses’ Speech on Degree] 723
THE DEVELOPMENT OF PROSE STYLE 724
Sir John Cheke: [Our Own Tongue Clean and Pure] 727
The Bible: Translations of the Twenty-third Psalm 728
The Great Bible 728
A Latin-English Psalter 728
Thomas Sternhold and John Hopkins’ Psalm-Book 729
The Geneva Bible 729
The Bishops’ Bible 729
The Douai Bible 730
The Authorized or King James Bible 730
John Lyly: Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit 730
Sir Philip Sidney: Arcadia 732
Philip Stubbes: The Anatomy of Abuses 732
William Bullein: A Dialogue Against the Pestilence 733
The Seventeenth Century (1603–1660) 737
JOHN DONNE (1572–1631) 755
The Good-Morrow 759
Song (“Go and catch a falling star”) 759
The Undertaking 760
The Indifferent 761
The Canonization 762
Twicknam Garden 763
The Apparition 764
Love’s Alchemy 764
The Flea 765
The Bait 766
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning 767
The Ecstasy 768
Lovers’ Infiniteness 770
The Sun Rising 771
Air and Angels 772
Break of Day 772
A Valediction: Of Weeping 773
The Funeral 774
The Relic 774
To the Countess of Bedford 775
Elegy IV. The Perfume 777
Satire III, Religion 779
Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward 782
Holy Sonnets 783
1 (“Thou hast made me, and shall Thy work decay?”) 783
5 (“I am a little world made cunningly”) 784
7 (“At the round earth’s imagined corners, blow”) 784
10 (“Death, be not proud, though some have calléd thee”) 785
14 (“Batter my heart, three-personed God; for You”) 785
18 (“Show me, dear Christ, Thy spouse so bright and clear”) 786
A Hymn to Christ, at the Author’s Last Going into Germany 786
Hymn to God My God, in My Sickness 787
A Hymn to God the Father 788
Paradoxes and Problems 789
Paradox VI. That It Is Possible to Find Some Virtue in Women 789
Problem II. Why Puritans Make Long Sermons? 790
Problem VI. Why Hath the Common Opinion Afforded Women Souls? 790
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions 791
Meditation XI 791
Meditation XIV 793
Meditation XVII 794
Sermon LXXVI 796
[On Falling out of God’s Hand] 796
BEN JONSON (1572–1637) 797
To Penshurst 799
To the Memory of My Beloved Master William Shakespeare 802
To William Camden 804
On My First Daughter 804
On My First Son 805
To John Donne 805
It Was a Beauty That I Saw 805
Epitaph on Elizabeth, L. H. 806
An Elegy 806
Slow, Slow, Fresh Fount 807
Queen and Huntress 808
Gypsy Songs 808
Though I Am Young and Cannot Tell 809
Song: To Celia 809
Come, My Celia 810
The Triumph of Charis 810
Still to Be Neat 811
Ode to Himself 812
The Vision of Delight 813
ROBERT HERRICK (1591–1674) 819
The Argument of his Book 821
Discontents in Devon 821
Delight in Disorder 822
Upon Julia’s Clothes 822
To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time 822
Upon a Child That Died 823
Another Grace for a Child 823
Corinna’s Going A-Maying 823
Oberon’s Feast 825
His Return to London 827
To the Water Nymphs Drinking at the Fountain 827
His Prayer to Ben Jonson 828
An Ode for Him 828
Upon Prue, His Maid 829
Upon His Spaniel Tracy 829
The Pillar of Fame 829
GEORGE HERBERT (1593–1633) 830
Easter Wings 831
Virtue 831
Jordan (I) 832
Jordan (II) 833
Denial 833
The Altar 834
The Flower 835
The Collar 836
The Pulley 837
Discipline 837
Prayer (I) 838
Anagram 839
Temptation 839
Sin’s Round 840
Aaron 841
Love (III) 841
RICHARD CRASHAW (ca. 1613–1649) 842
In the Holy Nativity of Our Lord God 843
The Flaming Heart 846
On Our Crucified Lord, Naked and Bloody 847
To the Infant Martyrs 847
I Am the Door 847
Luke 11 848
Upon the Infant Martyrs 848
Luke 7 848
On the Wounds of Our Crucified Lord 848
HENRY VAUGHAN (1621–1695) 849
The Retreat 850
Cock-Crowing 851
Regeneration 852
The Book 854
Peace 855
Corruption 855
The World 856
They Are All Gone into the World of Light! 858
Man 859
ANDREW MARVELL (1621–1678) 860
The Garden 861
The Mower, Against Gardens 863
The Mower’s Song 864
Bermudas 865
A Dialogue Between the Soul and Body 866
Mourning 867
To His Coy Mistress 868
The Definition of Love 869
JOHN MILTON (1608–1674) 870
L’Allegro 872
Il Penseroso 876
At a Solemn Music 881
Comus 882
Sweet Echo 882
Sabrina Fair 882
By the Rushy-fringed Bank 882
Lycidas 883
How Soon Hath Time 889
On the New Forcers of Conscience Under the Long Parliament 890
On the Late Massacre in Piedmont 891
When I Consider How My Light Is Spent 891
Methought I Saw My Late Espoused Saint 892
Final Chorus from Samson Agonistes 892
Of Education 893
Areopagitica 901
Paradise Lost 911
Book I 913
Book II 934
Book III [The Consult in Heaven] 959
Book IV [Satan’s Entry into Paradise] 969
Book VII [The Invocation] 977
Book IX [The Fall] 979
Book X [Consequences of the Fall] 997
Book XII [The Departure from Eden] 1004
seventeenth-century lyrics 1010
SIR HENRY WOTTON (1568–1639) 1011
On His Mistress, the Queen of Bohemia 1011
EDWARD, LORD HERBERT OF CHERBURY (1583–1648) 1012