Silzer's English Literature Twelve

Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen

. . . best known poem of the First World War (notes)

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares(2) we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest(3) began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots(4)
Of tired, outstripped(5) Five-Nines(6) that dropped behind.
Gas!(7) Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets(8) just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime(9) . . .
Dim, through the misty panes(10) and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering,(11) choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud(12)
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest(13)
To children ardent(14) for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.(15)

Wilfred Owen
8 October 1917 - March, 1918

More Poems of World War I

Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen
Here Dead We Lie by A E Housman
Peace by Rupert Brooke
This is no case of . . . by Edward Thomas

Because I could not stop for Death by Emily Dickinson

Because I could not stop for Death – 
He kindly stopped for me –  
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –  
And Immortality.

We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility – 

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring –  
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –  
We passed the Setting Sun – 

Or rather – He passed us – 
The Dews drew quivering and chill – 
For only Gossamer, my Gown – 
My Tippet – only Tulle – 

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground – 
The Roof was scarcely visible – 
The Cornice – in the Ground – 

Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads 
Were toward Eternity – 

More poems by Emily Dickinson

A Bird came down the Walk (328)

A Drop fell on the Apple Tree (794)

A lane of Yellow led the eye (1650)

A Man may make a Remark (952)

Because I could not stop for Death (712)

Besides the Autumn poets sing (131)

Color - Caste - Denomination - (970)

Come Slowly—Eden (211)

Fame is a fickle food (1659)

Hope is the thing with feathers (254)

I cannot live with You (640)

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain (280)

I heard a Fly buzz (465)

I like to see it lap the Miles (43)

I measure every Grief I meet (561)

I taste a liquor never brewed (214)

I tie my Hat—I crease my Shawl (443)

I'm Nobody! Who are you? (260)

It was not Death, for I stood up (510)

It's all I have to bring today (26)

Knows how to forget! (433)

Like Brooms of Steel (1252)

Luck is not chance (1350)

My life closed twice before its close (96)

One day is there of the series

One Sister have I in our house (14)

Safe in their Alabaster Chambers (216)

The Outlet (162)

The Savior must have been a docile Gentleman (1487)

The Soul selects her own Society (303)

The Soul unto itself (683)

There is no frigate like a book (1263)

There's a certain Slant of light (258)

To make a prairie (1755)

Two Butterflies went out at Noon— (533)

We never know how high we are (1176)

Wild Nights – Wild Nights! (249)

Prose by
Emily Dickinson

Letter to Susan Huntington Dickinson

The Darkling Thrush By Thomas Hardy

I leant upon a coppice gate

When Frost was spectre-grey,

And Winter's dregs made desolate

The weakening eye of day.

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky

Like strings of broken lyres,

And all mankind that haunted nigh

Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be

The Century's corpse outleant,

His crypt the cloudy canopy,

The wind his death-lament.

The ancient pulse of germ and birth

Was shrunken hard and dry,

And every spirit upon earth

Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among

The bleak twigs overhead

In a full-hearted evensong

Of joy illimited;

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,

In blast-beruffled plume,

Had chosen thus to fling his soul

Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings

Of such ecstatic sound

Was written on terrestrial things

Afar or nigh around,

That I could think there trembled through

His happy good-night air

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew

And I was unaware.

More poems by Thomas Hardy

Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold

Dover Beach


[First published 1867.] THE SEA is calm to-night,
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the Straits;—on the French coast, the light
Gleams, and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.	5
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the ebb meets the moon-blanch’d sand,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves suck back, and fling,	10
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago	15
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.	20

The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d;
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,	25
Retreating to the breath
Of the night-wind down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems	30
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain	35
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

More works by Matthew Arnold

		Author’s Preface, 1853
		Advertisement to the Second Edition, 1854
		Alaric at Rome. A Prize Poem, 1840
		Cromwell: A Prize Poem, 1843
		Horatian Echo, 1847
		Sonnet to the Hungarian Nation, 1849

The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems. By A. 1849
		Sonnet
		Mycerinus
		Sonnet. To a Friend
		The Strayed Reveller
		Fragment of an ‘Antigone’
		The Sick King in Bokhara

Sonnets—
		Shakespeare
		To the Duke of Wellington
		Written in Butler’s Sermons
		Written in Emerson’s Essays
		To an Independent Preacher
		To George Cruikshank, Esq.
		To a Republican Friend
		To a Republican Friend (Continued)
		Religious Isolation

		To my Friends
		A Modern Sappho
		The New Sirens
		The Voice
		To Fausta
		Desire
		Stanzas on a Gipsy Child by the Sea-shore
		The Hayswater Boat
		The Forsaken Merman
		The World and the Quietist
		In utrumque paratus
		Resignation

Empedocles on Etna, and Other Poems. By A. 1852 Empedocles on Etna
		Act I. Scene I
		Act I. Scene II
		Act II

Poems:—
		The River
		Excuse
		Indifference
		Too Late
		On the Rhine
		Longing
		The Lake
		Parting
		Absence
		Destiny
		To Marguerite, in Returning a Volume of the Letters of Ortis
		Human Life
		Despondency
		Youth’s Agitations
		Self-Deception
		Lines written by a Death-Bed

Tristram and Iseult
I.		Tristram
II.		Iseult of Ireland
III.		Iseult of Brittany

		Memorial Verses
		Courage
		Self-Dependence
		A Summer Night
		The Buried Life
		A Farewell
		Obermann
		Consolation
		Lines written in Kensington Gardens
		The World’s Triumphs
		The Second Best
		Revolutions
		The Youth of Nature
		The Youth of Man
		Morality
		Progress
		The Future

Poems; A New Edition. 1853
		Sohrab and Rustum. An Episode
		Philomela
		Thekla’s Answer

The Church of Brou
I.		The Castle
II.		The Church
III.		The Tomb

		The Neckan
		A Dream
		Requiescat
		The Scholar Gipsy
		Stanzas in Memory of the Late Edward Quillinan, Esq.

Poems, Second Series, 1855 Balder Dead. An Episode
I.		Sending
II.		Journey to The Dead
III.		Funeral

		Separation

Two Poems from Magazines, 1855
		Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse
		Haworth Churchyard, April, 1855

Poems, Third Edition, 1857
		To Marguerite

Merope. A Tragedy. 1858
		Preface
		Historical Introduction
		Merope

Poems from Magazines, 1860–1866
		Men of Genius
		Saint Brandan
		A Southern Night
		Thyrsis

New Poems, 1867
		A Picture at Newstead
		Rachel
		East London
		West London
		Anti-Desperation
		Immortality
		Worldly Place
		The Divinity
		The Good Shepherd with the Kid
		Austerity of Poetry
		East and West
		Monica’s Last Prayer
		Calais Sands
		Dover Beach
		The Terrace at Berne
		Stanzas composed at Carnac
		Fragment of Chorus of a Dejaneira
		Palladium
		Early Death and Fame
		Youth and Calm
		Growing Old
		The Progress of Poesy
		A Nameless Epitaph
		The Last Word
		A Wish
		A Caution to Poets
		Pis-Aller
		Epilogue to Lessing’s Laocoön
		Bacchanalia; Or, The New Age
		Rugby Chapel
		Heine’s Grave
		Obermann once more

Song by Emily Brontë

The linnet in the rocky dells,
The moor-lark in the air,
The bee among the heather bells
That hide my lady fair:

The wild deer browse above her breast;
The wild birds raise their brood;
And they, her smiles of love caressed,
Have left her solitude!

I ween, that when the grave's dark wall
Did first her form retain,
They thought their hearts could ne'er recall
The light of joy again.

They thought the tide of grief would flow
Unchecked through future years;
But where is all their anguish now,
And where are all their tears?

Well, let them fight for honour's breath,
Or pleasure's shade pursue--
The dweller in the land of death
Is changed and careless too.

And, if their eyes should watch and weep
Till sorrow's source were dry,
She would not, in her tranquil sleep,
Return a single sigh!

Blow, west-wind, by the lonely mound,
And murmur, summer-streams--
There is no need of other sound
To soothe my lady's dreams.

More poems by Emily Brontë

Fiction: Wuthering Heights

- Chapter 1
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3
- Chapter 4
- Chapter 5
- Chapter 6
- Chapter 7
- Chapter 8
- Chapter 9
- Chapter 10
- Chapter 11
- Chapter 12
- Chapter 13
- Chapter 14
- Chapter 15
- Chapter 16
- Chapter 17
- Chapter 18
- Chapter 19
- Chapter 20
- Chapter 21
- Chapter 22
- Chapter 23
- Chapter 24
- Chapter 25
- Chapter 26
- Chapter 27
- Chapter 28
- Chapter 29
- Chapter 30
- Chapter 31
- Chapter 32
- Chapter 33
- Chapter 34

My Last Duchess (Ferrara) by Robert Browning

That's my last duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will't please you sit and look at her? I said
"Fra Pandolf" by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
That depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain drawn for you, but I) [10]
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 't was not
Her husband's presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
Fra Pandolf chanced to say "Her mantle laps
Over my lady's wrist too much" or "Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat:" such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough [20]
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart - how shall I say? - too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed: she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, 't was all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace -all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech, [30]
Or blush,at least. She thanked men - good! but thanked
Somehow - I know not how - as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech - (which I have not) - to make your will
Quite clear to such a one, and say, "Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss
Or there exceed the mark"- and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set [40]
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse
- E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will 't please you rise? We'll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master's known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence [50]
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting is my object. Nay, we'll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me.

More poems by Robert Browning

Earl Mertoun’s Song (OBEV); Home-thoughts, from Abroad (OBEV); Home-thoughts, from the Sea (OBEV); In a Gondola (OBEV); Last Ride together (OBEV); Lost Mistress (OBEV); Meeting at Night (OBEV); Misconceptions (OBEV); Parting at Morning (OBEV); Pippa’s Song (OBEV); Porphyria’s Lover (OBEV); Song (OBEV); Song from ‘Paracelsus’ (OBEV); Thus the Mayne glideth (OBEV); Wanderers (OBEV); You’ll love Me yet (OBEV)

How do I love thee? SONNET #43, From the Portugese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints!---I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!---and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892)


IT little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard and sleep, and feed, and know not me.	5
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy’d
Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades	10
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour’d of them all;	15
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades	20
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me	25
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire	30
To follow knowledge, like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil	35
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro’ soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail	40
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port: the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,	45
Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;	50
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep	55
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths	60
Of all the western stars until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’	65
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.	70

More poems by Tennyson

624.	The Lady of Shalott
625.	Sweet and Low
626.	Tears, Idle Tears
627.	Blow, Bugle, Blow
628.	Home They Brought Her Warrior Dead
629.	Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal
630.	O Swallow, Swallow
631.	Break, Break, Break
632.	In the Valley of Cauteretz
633.	Vivien’s Song
634.	Enid’s Song
635.	Ulysses
636.	Locksley Hall
637.	Morte d’Arthur
638.	The Lotos-Eaters
639.	You Ask Me, Why
640.	Love Thou Thy Land
641.	Sir Galahad
642.	The Higher Pantheism
643.	Flower in the Crannied Wall
644.	Wages
645.	The Charge of the Light Brigade
646.	The Revenge
647.	Rizpah
648.	To Virgil
649.	Maud
	Part I
	Part II
650.	Crossing the Bar

When I have Fears that I may cease to be by John Keats. 1795–1821

WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high pil`d books, in charact'ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,	5
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And feel that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,	10
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think,
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

More Poems by Keats

Keats, John. 1795–1821	Song of the Indian Maid
	Ode to a Nightingale
	Ode on a Grecian Urn
	Ode to Psyche
	To Autumn
	Ode on Melancholy
	Fragment of an Ode to Maia
	Bards of Passion and of Mirth
	Fancy
	Stanzas
	Las Belle Dame sans Merci
	On first looking into Chapman's Homer
	When I have Fears that I may cease to be
	To Sleep
	Last Sonnet

Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats. 1795–1821

MY heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,	5
But being too happy in thine happiness,
That thou, light-wingèd Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.	10

O for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country-green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South!	15
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stainèd mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:	20

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,	25
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs;
Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.	30

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,	35
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.	40

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;	45
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast-fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.	50

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,	55
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.	60

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path	65
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that ofttimes hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.	70

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades	75
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep?	80