These are links to www sites relating to the poets in George Saintsbury's Historical Manual Of English Prosody, Book IV, Chapter II, Page 298: "Reasoned List of Poets with Special Regard to Their Prosodic Quality and Influence." The text is a transcription of Saintsbury's comments, not mine. Dates are Saintsbury's, not modified when modern scholarship disagrees with him. Wherever possible I've excluded sites that merely duplicate material from other sites to which they should have instead linked. Such sites merely make research more difficult. Which spelling to use has often been haphazard and arbitrary. Apologies, but I see no viable solution from a practical point of view.
All terms explicated in the extensive glossary from the Historical Manual are linked to that term in the glossary, in the first occurrrence in the comments to each poet. It occurred to me to only link the first occurrence in the page, but this would be cumbersome to someone only looking at a specific poet. When a technical term is employed but doesn't appear in the glossary, an external site has been linked. When and how this is done has been completely arbitrary, and, though I've endeavored to link to a good source, such link constitutes an endorsement of the content linked to nor a testimonial in favor of the site on which the content resides. For the present, I remain catholic among the prosodic sects, maintaining an appreciation for multiple points of view.
Mention of a poet included in the list within the comments about a poet is linked to that poet on this page.
Each poet is linked to the appropriate section and page of the History at the head of the links section of each poet, just above the link for the Wikipedia entry if there is one. The heading will be "History, Volume #, Chapter # ". Naturally, only poets appearing in the completed volumes on this site will be so lined.
Correction of outright errors (including dead or incorrect links) and/or additions of relevant substantive content (i.e. links) would be greatly appreciated. Please send them by e-mail to me at dirk@dirk-johnson.com.
— Arnold, Matthew (1822-1888): Made various attempts at (Outside of his classical drama Merope at rhymless metres in English. Countenanced the English hexameter. Also made, but abandoned, experiments in the enjambed couplet, which anticipated William Morris.
Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold, With Explanatory Notes by the Author (A.L. Burt, New York, 1900(?) - Internet Archive/OpenLibrary)
The Works of Matthew Arnold in Fifteen Volumes, Volume I: Poems, Edited by George William Erskine Russell (MacMillan and Co. Limited, London, 1903 - Internet Archive/OpenLibrary)
The Works of Matthew Arnold in Fifteen Volumes, Volume II: Poems, Second Series, Edited by George William Erskine Russell (MacMillan and Co. Limited, London, 1903 - Internet Archive/OpenLibrary)
The Works of Matthew Arnold in Fifteen Volumes, Volume III: Essays in Criticism, Edited by George William Erskine Russell (MacMillan and Co. Limited, London, 1903 - Internet Archive/OpenLibrary)
The Works of Matthew Arnold in Fifteen Volumes, Volume IV: Essays in Criticism, Second Series, Edited by George William Erskine Russell (MacMillan and Co. Limited, London, 1903 - Internet Archive/OpenLibrary)
The Works of Matthew Arnold in Fifteen Volumes, Volume V: On the Study of Celtic Literature and On Translating Homer, Edited by George William Erskine Russell (MacMillan and Co. Limited, London, 1903 - Internet Archive/OpenLibrary)
[Volume VI not available]
The Works of Matthew Arnold in Fifteen Volumes, Volume VII: Literature and Dogma, Toward a Better Apprehension of the Bible, Edited by George William Erskine Russell (MacMillan and Co. Limited, London, 1903 - Internet Archive/OpenLibrary)
The Works of Matthew Arnold in Fifteen Volumes, Volume VIII: God and the Bible, A Review of Objections to 'Literature and Dogma', Edited by George William Erskine Russell (MacMillan and Co. Limited, London, 1903 - Internet Archive/OpenLibrary)
The Works of Matthew Arnold in Fifteen Volumes, Volume IX: St. Paul and Protestantism and Last Essays on Church and Religion, Edited by George William Erskine Russell (MacMillan and Co. Limited, London, 1904 - Internet Archive/OpenLibrary)
The Works of Matthew Arnold in Fifteen Volumes, Volume X: Mixed Essays, Edited by George William Erskine Russell (MacMillan and Co. Limited, London, 1904 - Internet Archive/OpenLibrary)
The Works of Matthew Arnold in Fifteen Volumes, Volume XI: Irish Essays and Others, Edited by George William Erskine Russell (MacMillan and Co. Limited, London, 1904 - Internet Archive/OpenLibrary)
The Works of Matthew Arnold in Fifteen Volumes, Volume XII: A French Eton, Higher Schools and Universities in France, and Higher Schools and Universities in Germany, Edited by George William Erskine Russell (MacMillan and Co. Limited, London, 1904 - Internet Archive/OpenLibrary)
The Works of Matthew Arnold in Fifteen Volumes, Volume XIII: Letters 1848-1888, Edited by George William Erskine Russell (MacMillan and Co. Limited, London, 1904 - Internet Archive/OpenLibrary)
The Works of Matthew Arnold in Fifteen Volumes, Volume XIII: Letters 1848-1888, Volume I, Edited by George William Erskine Russell (MacMillan and Co. Limited, London, 1904 - Internet Archive/OpenLibrary)
The Works of Matthew Arnold in Fifteen Volumes, Volume XIII: Letters 1848-1888, Volume II, Edited by George William Erskine Russell (MacMillan and Co. Limited, London, 1904 - Internet Archive/OpenLibrary)
The Works of Matthew Arnold in Fifteen Volumes, Volume XIII: Letters 1848-1888, Volume III, Edited by George William Erskine Russell (MacMillan and Co. Limited, London, 1904 - Internet Archive/OpenLibrary)
The Portable Matthew Arnold, Edited, and With and Introduction, by Lionel Trilling (The Viking Press, New York, 1949 - Internet Archive/OpenLibrary)
Selected Poems of Matthew Arnold, Edited with Introduction and Notes by Hereford R. George and A. M. Leigh, Second Edition (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1910 - Internet Archives/OpenLibrary)
29 Selected Poems (University of Toronto)
Celtic Literature (Gutenberg)
Culture and Anarchy (University of Toronto)
Culture and Anarchy (Gutenberg)
Matthew Arnold, by George Saintsbury, Third Impression, (William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh and London, MCMII [1902] - Internet Archives/Gutenberg)
— Barham, Richard H. (Thomas Ingoldsby) (1788-1845) Showed the greatest proficiency in light, loose metres of the anapaestic division, and exercised much influence by them, owing to the wide and long-sustained popularity of the Ingoldsby Legends (1840, but earlier in magazines).
The Ingoldsby Legends, With an Introduction by Sir Henry Newbolt (Blackie & Sons, Limited, London and Glasgow, [date unknown] - Internet Archive/OpenLibrary)
The Jackaw of Rheims (University of Toronto)
The Jackaw of Rheims (Oxford Book of Verse at Bartleby.com)
Legenda Cornelia Agrippy (translated into Czech)
— Beaumont, Sir John (1583-1623) One of the earliest (before 1625) practitioners, and perhaps the very earliest champion in verse itself, of the stopped couplet exactly arranged.
Of His Dear Son, Gervase (The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1919 - Bartleby.com)
The Theatre of Apollo (Renascence Editions, University of Oregon)
— Blake, William (1757-1827) Although Blake's immediate and direct influence must have been small, there is hardly any poet who exhibits the tendency of his time in metre more and variously and vehemently. In his unhesitating and brilliantly successful use of substitution in octosyllabic couplet, ballad measure, and lyrical adjustments of various kinds, as well as in media varying from actual verse to the rhythmed prose of his "Prophetic" books, Blake struck definitely away from the monotonous and select metres of the eighteenth century, and anticipated the liberty, multiplicity, and variety of the nineteenth. And he differed, almost equally, from all but one or two of his older contemporaries, and from most of his younger for many years, in the colour and "fingering" of his verse.
Illuminated and Non-Illuminated Manuscripts (Blakearchive.org)
Illuminated and Non-Illuminated Manuscripts (The Tate)
The Complete Poetry and Prose (Blake Digital Text Project, Edited by David V. Erdman)
Songs of Innocence and Experience (Blake Digital Text Project, Graphical Hypertext)
Songs of Innocence and Experience and the Book of Thel (Gutenberg)
Illuminated and Non-Illuminated Manuscripts (The Tate)
The Blake Multimedia Project - CalPoly, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obisbo)
45 Selected Poems and Excerpts (University of Toronto)
Various Poems (at the Alphabetical List of Authors for the Oxford Book of Verse at Bartleby.com)
— Bowles, William Lisle (1762-1850): A generally mediocre poet, who, however, deserves a place of honour here for the sonnets which he published in 1789, and which had an immense influence on Coleridge, Southey, and others of his juniors, not merely in restoring that great form to popularity, but by inculcating description and study of nature in connection with the thoughts and passions of men.
Selected Poems (University of Toronto)
Selected Sonnets (Sonnets.org)
Two Poems (WWNorton.com)
Time and Grief (Oxford Book of Verse at Bartleby.com)
Healing (English with Russian Translation)
The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, with Memoir, Critical Dissertation and Explanatory Notes by the Rev. George Gilfillan, Volume I: Sonnets and Miscelleneous Poems (James Nichol, Edenburgh; James Nisbet and Co., London; W. Robertson, Dublin, MDCCCLV [1855] Google Books)
— Browne, William (1591-1643): A Jacobean poet of the loosely named Spenserian school — effective in various metres, but a special and early exponent of the enjambed couplet.
Excerpt from Britannias Pastorals (University of Toronto)
Memory (Oxford Book of Verse at Bartleby.com)
Song (Oxford Book of Verse at Bartleby.com)
The Rose (Oxford Book of Verse at Bartleby.com)
A Welcome (Oxford Book of Verse at Bartleby.com)
The Sirens' Song (Oxford Book of Verse at Bartleby.com)
In Obitum Xo Maij, 1614 (Oxford Book of Verse at Bartleby.com)
On the Countess Dowager of Pembroke (Oxford Book of Verse at Bartleby.com)
The Poems (Volume I) of William Browne of Tavistock, Edited by Gordon Goodwin, With an Introduction by A.H. Bullen (Lawrence & Bullen, London, 1894 - Google Books)
— Browning, Elizabeth Barrett (1806-1861): Remarkable here for her adoption of the nineteenth-century principle of the widest possible metrical experiment and variety. In actual metre effective, though sometimes a little slipshod. In rhyme a portent and a warning. Perhaps the worst rhymester in the English language — perpetrating, and attempting to defend on a mistaken view of assonance, cacophonies so hideous that they need not sully this page.
The Poetical Works, Complete, From the 12th London Edition (Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., New York, 1882(?) - InternetArchive/Open Library)
The Poetical Works, Series I,With Eight Orignial Engravings (Collins Clear-Type Press, London and Glasgow, 1880(?) - InternetArchive/Open Library)
The Poetical Works, Series II,With Portrait and Illustration (Collins Clear-Type Press, London and Glasgow, 1880(?) - InternetArchive/Open Library)
Selected Poems (Erin's Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning Page)
Various Poems (at the Alphabetical List of Authors for the Oxford Book of Verse at Bartleby.com)
Translations from the Greek Christian Poets (ocs.org - Orthodox Christian Foundation)
Sonnets from the Portuguese (Gutenberg)
— Browning, Robert (1812-1889): Often described as a loose and rugged metrist, and a licentious, if not criminal, rhymester. Nothing of the sort. Extraordinarily bold in both capacities, and sometimes, perhaps, as usually happens in these cases, a little too bold; but in metre practically never, in rhyme very seldom (and then only for purposes of designed contrast, like the farce in tragedy), overstepping actual bounds. A great master of broken metres, internal rhyme, heavily equivalenced lines, and all the tours de force of English prosody.
Translation of Aeschylus' Agamemnon (Perseus at Tufts)
Dramatic Lyrics (eserver.org, Iowa State University)
Dramatic Romances (eserver.org, Iowa State University)
Dramatic Romances (Gutenberg)
The Poetical Works, Volume I, Pauline, Paracelsus, Sordello, Dramatic Lyrics, A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, Etc., with Introduction and Notes (Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston and New York, 1906 - Internet Archive/OpenLibrary: Contributor Kelly, University of Toronto)
The Poetical Works, Volume II, The Ring and the Book, Christmas Eve and Easter Day, Men and Women, Dramatis Personae, Balaustion's Adventure, Etc., with Introductions and Notes (Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston and New York, 1906 - Internet Archive/OpenLibrary: Contributor Kelly, University of Toronto)
The Poetical Works, Volume III, Red Cotton Night-Cap Country, Aristophanes' Apology, The Inn Album, Agamemnon, Dramatic Idyls,Parlayings, Asolando, Etc., with Introduction and Notes (Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston and New York, 1906 - Internet Archive/OpenLibrary: Contributor Kelly, University of Toronto)
The Ring and the Book, Riverside Edition, The Poetic and Dramatic Works of Robert Browning in Six Volumes; Volume III, with Introduction and Notes (Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston and New York, 1887 [edition up which the three volumes above are based, but I thought the Ring and the Book in a single volume useful-dj] - Internet Archive/OpenLibrary: Contributor Kelly, University of Toronto)
Browning's Shorter Poems, Selected and Edited by Franklin T. Baker, Professor of English in Teacher's College, Columbia University, Fourth Editon, Revised and Enlareged (The MacMillan Company, New York; MacMillan & Co., Ltd., 1899 - Internet Archive/Gutenberg)
Poetry and Prose, With Appreciations by Landor, Bagehot, Swinburne, Henry James, Saintsbury and F.L. Lucas, with an Introduction and Notes by Sir Humphrey Milford (Oxford University Press 1941, First Printed in Bombay, India 1945; Printed in India with the photo offset press - Internet Archive/OpenLibrary: Contributors Osmania University, Digital Library of India)
Sordello (Partial, Pagerealm.com)
Hypertext Selected Poems (Hypertext Versions, University of Tennessee)
Selected Poems (University of Toronto)
Selected Poems (emule.com)
The Pied Piper of Hamelin (University of Indiana)
A Blot in the Scutcheon (Gutenberg)
Christmas Eve (Gutenberg)
Various Poems (Robert Browning Page at Bartleby.com)
The Ring and the Book (Bibliomania.com)
The Ring and the Book, From the Author's Revised Text, Edited with Biographical and Critical Notes and Introduction by Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke, Editors of "Poet-Lore" (Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., New York, 1897 - Google Books)
Stafford — Sordello, From the Author's Revised Text, Edited with Introductions and Notes by Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke (Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., New York, 1898 - Google Books)
Sordello, Strafford, Christmas-Eve and Christmas Day (Ticknor and Fields, Boston, 1864 - Google Books)
— Burns, Robert (1759-1796): Of the very greatest importance in historical prosody, because of the shock which his fresh dialect administered to the conventional poetic diction of the eighteenth century, and his unusual and broken measures (especially the famous Burns-metre) to its notions of metric. An admirable performer on the strings that he tried; a master of musical "fingering" of verse; and to some extent a pioneer of the revival of substitution.
Poems and Songs of Robert Burns (Internet Archive/Gutenberg)
Complete Works, (Volume I of VI), of Robert Burns, Self Interpreting, Illustrated with Sixty Etchings and Wood Cuts, Maps and Facsimiles (National Library Company, New York, 1909 - Internet Archive/Open Library, Contributer Kelly, University of Totonto)
Complete Works, (Volume II of VI), of Robert Burns, Self Interpreting, Illustrated with Sixty Etchings and Wood Cuts, Maps and Facsimiles (National Library Company, New York, 1909 - Internet Archive/Open Library, Contributer Kelly, University of Totonto)
Complete Works, (Volume III of VI), of Robert Burns, Self Interpreting, Illustrated with Sixty Etchings and Wood Cuts, Maps and Facsimiles (National Library Company, New York, 1909 - Internet Archive/Open Library, Contributer Kelly, University of Totonto)
Complete Works, (Volume IV of VI), of Robert Burns, Self Interpreting, Illustrated with Sixty Etchings and Wood Cuts, Maps and Facsimiles (National Library Company, New York, 1909 - Internet Archive/Open Library, Contributer Kelly, University of Totonto)
Complete Works, (Volume V of VI, Containing Sheet Music), of Robert Burns, Self Interpreting, Illustrated with Sixty Etchings and Wood Cuts, Maps and Facsimiles (National Library Company, New York, 1909 - Internet Archive/Open Library, Contributer Kelly, University of Totonto)
Complete Works, (Volume VI of VI, Containing Sheet Music), of Robert Burns, Self Interpreting, Illustrated with Sixty Etchings and Wood Cuts, Maps and Facsimiles (National Library Company, New York, 1909 - Internet Archive/Open Library, Contributer Kelly, University of Totonto)
Works, (Volume I of II, Containing Sheet Music) of Robert Burns, with a Complete Life of the Poet and Numerous Notes, Annotations, and Appendices (Blackie and Son, Glasgow and London, 1857 - Internet Archive/Open Library, Contributer Robarts, University of Totonto)
Works, (Volume I of II, Containing Sheet Music) of Robert Burns, with a Complete Life of the Poet and Numerous Notes, Annotations, and Appendices (Blackie and Son, Glasgow and London, 1857 - Internet Archive/Open Library, Contributer Robarts, University of Totonto)
Complete Works (Harvard Classics at Bartleby.com)
Complete Works (Gutenberg)
Complete Works (RobertBurns.org)
Complete Songs (Linn Recordings offered at RobertBurns.org [commercial recording, but not that easy to find. I bought the whole set. - dj])
— Byron, George Gordon, Lord (1788-1824): Usually much undervalued as a prosodist, even by those who admire him as a poet. Really of great importance in this respect, owning to the variety, and in some cases the novelty, of his accomplishment, and to its immense popularity. His Spenserians in Childe Harold not of the highest class, but the light octaves of Beppo and Don Juan the very best examples of the metre in English. Some fine but rhetorical blank verse, and a great deal of fluent octosyllabic couplet imitated from Scott. But his lyrics of most importance, combining popular appeal with great variety, and sometimes positive novelty, of adjustment and cadence. Diction is his weakest point.
Complete Poetical Works of Lord Byron, Student's Cambridge Edition (Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, New York, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco; The Riverside Press, Cambridge; 1905 - Internet Archive/Open Library, Contributer Robarts, University of Totonto)
Byron's Poetical Works, Volume I (Gutenberg)
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (Gutenberg)
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (on Geocities.com)
Don Juan (on Geocities.com)
Hebrew Melodies (on Geocities.com)
Manfred (LitGothic.com)
Manfred (Harvard Classics at Bartleby.com)
The Works of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Volume 2 (Gutenberg)
Selected Poetry (EnglishHistory.net)
— Campbell, Thomas (1777-1844): Not prosodically remarkable in his longer poems, but very much so in some of his shorter, especially "The Battle of the Baltic," where the bold shortening of the last line, effective in itself, has proved suggestive to others of even better things, such as the half-humourous, half-plaintive measure of Holmes's "The Last Leaf" and Locker's "Grandmamma."
The Pleasures of Hope, with Other Poems by Thomas Campbell, Seventh Edition (Mundell & Son, Edinburgh; Longman & Sons, London; 1804 - Internet Archive/Open Library, Contributer Robarts, University of Totonto)
Gurtrude of Wyoming and Other Poems by Thomas Campbell, Ninth Edition (Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green, London, 1825 - Internet Archive/Open Library, Contributer Robarts, University of Totonto)
Selected Poems (University of Toronto)
Various Poems (emule.com)
Various Poems (OldPoetry.com)
Hohenlinden (Harvard Classics at Bartleby.com)
The Soldier's Dream (Harvard Classics at Bartleby.com)
To The Evening Star (Harvard Classics at Bartleby.com)
Lord Ullin's Daughter (Harvard Classics at Bartleby.com)
To the Evening Star (Harvard Classics at Bartleby.com)
The River of Life (Harvard Classics at Bartleby.com)
The Maid of Neidpath (Harvard Classics at Bartleby.com)
Ode to Winter (Harvard Classics at Bartleby.com)
The Battle of the Baltic (Oxford Book of English Verse at Bartleby.com)
Ye Mariners of England (Oxford Book of English Verse at Bartleby.com)
Gurtrude of Wyoming and Other Poems by Thomas Campbell, Seventh Edition (Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, London, 1819 - Google Books)
The Pleasures of Hope, with Other Poems by Thomas Campbell, A New Edition (Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, London, 1822 - Google Books)
— Campion, Thomas (?-1619): Equally remarkable for the sweetness and variety of his rhymed lyrics in various ordinary measures, and as the advocate and practitioner of a system of rhymless verse, different from the usual hexametrical attempts of his contemporaries, but still adjusted to classical patterns.
The Works of Thomas Campion, Edited by Percival Vivian (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1909 - Internet Archive/Open Library, Contributer Pratt, University of Totonto)
The Description of a Masque [pdf/facsimile, includes music] Presented before the King's Maiestie at White-Hall, on Twelfth Night last, in honour of the Lord Hayes, and his Bride, Daughter and Heire to the Honourable the Lord Dennye, their Marriage hauing been the same Day at Court solemnized. (John Brown, London, (1607) - Godfrey's Book-shelf)
Songs and Masques of Thomas Campion, with Observations in the Art of English Poesy (A.H. Bullin, London, MCMIII (1903) - Internet Archive/Open Library, Contributer Robarts, University of Totonto)
The Works of Thomas Campion (Luminarium.org, with sound)
Observations in the Art of English Poesie (Renascence Editions)
The Latin Poetry of Thomas Campion (Bilingual Hypertext, University of California, Irvine)
Selected Poems (Table of Contents Page from Oxford Book of English Verse at Bartleby.com
Selected Poems (Chronological List of Authors in Harvard Classics at Bartleby.com)
Various Poems (Hoasm.org)
— Canning, George (1770-1827): Influential, in the general breaking-up of the conventional metres and diction of the eighteenth century, by his parodies of Darwin and his light lyrical pieces in the Anti-Jacobin.
Various Poems (OldPoetry.com)
The Friend of Humanity and the Knife Grinder (University of Toronto)
— Chamberlayne, William (1619-1689): Remarkable as, in Pharonnida, one of the chief exponents of the beauties, but still more of the dangers, of the enjambed heroic couplet; in his England's Jubile as a rather early, and by no means unaccomplished, practitioner of the rival form. To be carefully distinguished from his contemporary, Robert Chamberlain (fl. c. 1640), a very poor poetaster who wrote a few English hexameters.
Minor Poets of the Caroline Period, Edited by George Saintsbury [includes Pharonnida complete] (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1820 - Google Books)
Pharonnida; an Heroic Poem in Five Books Volume III , [Book V] by William Chamberlayne (C. Chapple, London, 1820 - Google Books)
— Chatterton, Thomas (1752-1770): Of some interest here because his manufactured diction was a protest against the conventional language of eighteenth century poetry. Of more, because he ventured up equivalence in octosyllabic couplet, and wrote ballad and other lyrical stanzas, entirely different in form and cadence from those of most of his contemporaries, and less artificial even than those of Collins and Gray.
The Rowley Poems (ExClassics.com)
Various Poems (OldPoetry.com)
Ælla, a Tragical Interlude (excerpt) (University of Toronto)
Song from Ælla (Oxford Book of English Verse at Bartleby.com)
Song from Ælla (Harvard Classics at Bartleby.com)
An Excellent Ballade of Charitie (University of Toronto)
— Chaucer, Geoffrey (1340?-1400): The reducer of the first stage of English prosody to complete form and order; the greatest master of prosodic harmony in our language before the the later sixteenth century, and one of the greatest (with value for capacity in language) of all time; the introducer of the decasyllabic couplet — if not absolutely, yet systematically and on a large scale — and of the seven-lined "rhyme-royal" stanza; and, finally, a poet whose command of the utmost prosodic possibilities of English, at the time of his writing, almost necessitated a temporary prosodic disorder, when those who followed attempted to imitate him with a changed pronunciation, orthography, and word-store.
History, Volume I, Book II, Chapter IV — html/flashpaper pdf
Chaucer's Works (Robinson Edition, University of Maine)
Chaucer Concordance (University of Maine)
Canterbury Tales (Robinson Edition, University of Virginia)
Canterbury Tales (Robinson Edition, University of Michigan)
Canterbury Tales and Other Poems (David Laing Purves Edition, Gutenberg)
Canterbury Tales (With Running Glossary, State University of New York, Brooklyn)
Canterbury Tales (With Interlinear "Translations", Harvard University)
Canterbury Tales (Bibliomania.com)
Canterbury Tales (Litrix.com)
Canterbury Tales ("Bilingual" Edition, Librarius.com)
Troilus and Criseyde (Skeat Edition, University of California, Berkeley)
Troilus and Criseyde (University of Michigan)
Troilus and Criseyde (Windeatt Edition, University of Virginia)
Troilus and Criseyde (Gutenberg)
Book of the Duchesse (Skeat Edition, University of California, Berkeley)
House of Fame (Skeat Edition, University of California, Berkeley)
Legend of Good Women (Skeat Edition, University of California, Berkeley)
Parliament of Fowles (Skeat Edition, University of California, Berkeley)
De consolatione philosphiæ (Boethius) (University of Michigan)
A Treatise on The Astrolabe (University of Michigan)
The Canterbury Tales: The Classic Text: Traditions and Interpretations (A journey through the texts and manuscripts - University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee)
Various Resources and Links (Luminarium.org)
Various Fragments Read Aloud (Chaucer Metapage, Virginia Military Institute)
— Cleveland, John (1613-1658): Of no great importance as a poet, but holding a certain position as a comparatively early experimenter with apparently anapaestic measures in his "Mark Antony" and other pieces.
On the Memory of Mr. Edward King, Drown'd in the Irish Seas (University of Toronto)
Various Poems (OldPoetry.com)
Three Poems (TheOtherPages.org)
An Elegy on Ben. Johnson (from Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems of the 17th Century at Bartleby.com)
Upon Phillis walking in a morning before Sun-rising (from Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems of the 17th Century at Bartleby.com)
— Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834): In the "Ancient Mariner" and "Christabel", the great instaurator of equivalence and substitution; a master of many other kinds of metre; and an experimenter in classical versing.
Lyrical Ballads (with Wordsworth) (Renascence, University of Oregon)
Lyrical Ballads (with Wordsworth) (Dalhousie University)
Coleridge Archive (University of Virginia)
Selected Poems (Linked Table of Contents Page from Oxford Book of English Verse at Bartleby.com)
Selected Poems (Linked Chronological List of Authors in Harvard Classics at Bartleby.com)
Christabel (University of Virginia)
Kubla Khan (University of Virginia)
Rime of the Ancient Mariner (University of Virginia)
Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Gutenberg)
Translation of Schiller's Death of Wallenstein (Gutenberg)
Translation of Schiller's The Piccolomini (Gutenberg)
Biographia Literaria (Gutenberg)
Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit, and Miscellaneous Essays From "The Friend" (Gutenberg)
— Collins, William (1721-1759): Famous in prosody for his attempt at odes less definitely "regular" than Gray's, but a vast improvement on the loose Pindaric which had preceded; and for a remarkable attempt at rhymless verse in that "To Evening" In diction retained a good deal of artificiality.
Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegorical Subjects (Renascence, University of Oregon)
The Persian Eclogues (Penn State, Hazleton)
Selected Poems (University of Toronto)
Selected Poems (Harvard Classics at Bartleby.com)
Selected Poems (Linked Table of Contents Page from Oxford Book of English Verse at Bartleby.com)
Odes to Fear (LitGothic.com)
— Congreve, William (1670-1729): Regularized Cowley's loose Pindaric.
False though She Be (Oxford Book of English Verse at Bartleby.com)
A Hue and Cry after Fair Amore (Oxford Book of English Verse at Bartleby.com)
Semele, An Opera (Libretto) (Renascence, University of Oregon)
The Double-Dealer (Gutenberg)
Incognita: or, Love and Duty Reconcil'd (Gutenberg)
Love for Love (Gutenberg)
The Old Bachelor (Gutenberg)
The Way of the World (Gutenberg)
The Way of the World (Bibliomania.com)
Ovid's Metamorphosis (trans with Dryden, Pope, Addison, et al (Sacred-Texts.com)
— Cowley, Abraham (1618-1667): The most popular poet of the mid-seventeenth century; important to prosody for a wide, various, and easy, though never quite consummate, command of lyric, as well as for a vigorous and effective couplet (with occasional Alexandrines) of a kind midway between that of the early seventeenth century and Dryden's; but chiefly for his introduction of the so-called Pindaric.
Selected Works (Luminarium.org)
Essays, Plays, and Sundry Verses (Questia.com)
Selected Poems (University of Toronto)
Selected Poems (in Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems of the 17th Century at Bartleby.com)
Selected Poems (in Oxford Book of English Verse at Bartleby.com)
Selected Poems (EnglishVerse.com)
Selected Poems (OldPoetry.com)
Lied Texts (RecMusic.org)
Plantarum 4.1-48 / "The Country Life. Libr. 4. Plantarum (Parallel Latin-English) (University of Virginia)
"Hymnus in Lucem" / "Hymn. To light" (Parallel Latin-English) (University of Virginia)
"Solitudo" / "Solitude" (Parallel Latin-English) (University of Virginia)
"Quid relinquendos" / "Why dost thou" (Parallel Latin-English) (University of Virginia)
"Quid relinquendos" / "Why dost thou" (Parallel Latin-English) (University of Virginia)
"Epitaphium Vi Autoris" / "The Living Author's Epitaph" (Englished by Various Hands) (University of Virginia)
Six Books of Plants (Various Translators) (University of Virginia)
Six Books of Plants (Anonymous Translator) (University of Virginia)
Essays (Gutenberg)
— Cowper, William (1731-1800): One of the first to protest, definitely and by name, against the "mechanic art" of Pope's couplet. He himself returned to Dryden for that metre; but practiced very largely in blank verse, and wrote lyrics with great sweetness, a fairly varied command of metre, and, in "Boadicea," "The Castaway," and some of his hymns, no small intensity of tone and cry. His chief shortcoming, a preference of elision to substitution.
Complete Poetical Works (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)
Selected Poems (University of Toronto)
The Task and Other Poems (Gutenberg)
Various Poems (PuritanSermons.com)
Translations from the French of Madame de la Mothe Guion (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)
The Diverting History of John Gilpin (San Antonio College)
The Colubriad (San Antonio College)
— Dixon, Richard Watson (1833-1900): The only English poet who has attempted, and (as far perhaps as the thing is possible) successfully carried out, a long poem (Mano) in terza rima. Possessed also of great lyrical gift in various metres, especially in irregular or Pindaric arrangements.
Autumn Song (Lied and Art Songs at RecMusic.org)
The Judgement of May and The Feathers of the Willow (TheOtherPages.org)
Humanity (from A Victorian Anthology at Bartleby.org)
Humanity (Sonnets.org)
From "Mano: a Poetical History." I. The Skylark (from A Victorian Anthology at Bartleby.org)
From "Mano: a Poetical History." II. Of a Vision of Hell, Which a Monk Had (from A Victorian Anthology at Bartleby.org)
From "Mano: a Poetical History." III. Of Temperance in Fortune (from A Victorian Anthology at Bartleby.org)
Ode on Conflicting Claims (from A Victorian Anthology at Bartleby.org)
Rapture: An Ode (from The Oxford Book of Mystical Verse at Bartleby.org)
— Donne, John (1630-1700): Famous for the beauty of his lyrical poetry, the "metaphysical" strangeness of his sentiment and diction throughout, and the roughness of his couplets. This last made Jonson, who thought him "the first poet in the world for some things," declare that he nevertheless "deserved hanging for not keeping accent," and has induced others to suppose a (probably imaginary) revolt against Spenserian smoothness, and an attempt at a new prosody.
The Works (Luminarium.org)
Selected Poems (University of Toronto)
Selected Poems (McMurry University Computer Science Department)
Selected Poems (in Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems of the 17th Century at Bartleby.com)
First and Second Anniversaries (Renascence, University of Oregon)
Holy Sonnets (TheOtherPages.org)
Essays and Poetry (OnLineLiterature.com)
Selections (Global-Language.com)
Juvenalia, or Certain Paradoxes and Problemes (Renascence, University of Oregon)
John Donne's Devotions (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)
— Drayton, Michael (1563-1631): A very important poet prosodically, representing the Elizabethan school as it passes into the Jacobean, and even the Caroline. Expresses and exemplifies the demand for the couplet (which he calls "gemell" or "geminel"), but is an adept in stanzas. In the Polyolbion produced the only long English poem in continuous Alexandrines before Browning's Fifine at the Fair (which is very much shorter). A very considerable sonneteer, and the deviser of varied and beautiful lyrical stanzas in short rhythms, the most famous being the " Ballad of Agincourt."
Various Works, Including Idea and Nymphidia (Luminarium.org)
Selected Poems (University of Toronto)
Selected Poems (in Oxford Book of English Verse at Bartleby.com)
Selected Poems (in Harvard Classics at Bartleby.com)
Selected Sonnets from Idea (Sonnets.org)
Endimion and Phœbe (Renascence, University of Oregon)
Idea (TheOtherPages.org)
— Dryden, John (1630-1700): The establisher and master of the stopped heroic couplet with variations of triplets and Alexandrines; the last great writer of dramatic blank verse, after he had given up the couplet for that use; master also of amy other metre — the stopped heroic quatrain, lyrics of various form, etc. — that he chose to try. A deliberate student of prosody, on which he had intended to leave a treatise, but did not.
Selected Poems (University of Toronto)
Selected Poems (Poetry-Archive.com)
All for Love (Bartleby.com)
All for Love (Bibliomania.com)
All for Love (Gutenberg)
Absalom and Achitophel (University of Toronto)
Absalom and Achitophel: The Second Part (excerpt) (University of Toronto)
The Hind and the Panther: Part I (excerpt) (University of Toronto)
To the Earl of Roscomon, on his Excellent Essay on Translated Verse (Pennsylvania State University)
Mac Flecknoe (University of Toronto)
Mac Flecknoe (Renascence, University of Oregon)
The Medal (TheOtherPages.org)
Ode in Memory of Mrs. Anne Killigrew (University of Toronto)
Ode in Memory of Mrs. Anne Killigrew (from Oxford Book of English Verse at Bartleby.com)
Religio Laici (excerpt) (University of Toronto)
Song for St. Cecilia's Day, 1687 (University of Toronto)
Song for St. Cecilia's Day, 1687 (from Oxford Book of English Verse at Bartleby.com)
Tales from Chaucer (Bibliomania.com)
Wife of Bath's Tale (Harvard University)
Virgil's Aeneid (Perseus at Tufts)
Virgil's Æneid (Renascence at University of Oregon)
Virgil's Æneid (Bartleby.com)
Ovid's Metamorphoses (Internet Classics, MIT)
Plutarch's Lives (Guttenberg - not attributed to Dryden, but Dryden nonetheless)
Plutarch's Lives (Internet Classics, MIT)
Preface to The Fables (1700) [Translations of Ovid and Chaucer] (Harvard University)
Of Dramatic Poesie (University of Toronto)
Discourses on Satire and on Epic Poetry (Gutenberg)
— Dunbar, William (1450?-1513? or 1530?): The most accomplished and various master of metre in Middle Scots, including both alliterative and strictly metrical forms. If he wrote "The Friars of Berwick," the chief master of decasyllabic couplet between Chaucer and Spenser.
History, Volume I, Book III, Chapter IV, p. 273 — html/flashpaper pdf
Ane Ballat of Our Lady (Student Page at New School University, New York)
Lament for the Makers (University of Toronto)
Lament for the Makers (from the Oxford Book of English Verse at Bartleby.com)
To a Lady (from the Oxford Book of English Verse at Bartleby.com)
To the City of London (University of Toronto)
To a Lady and In Honour of the City of London (Bibliomania.com)
In Honour of the City of London (from the Oxford Book of English Verse at Bartleby.com)
On the Nativity of Christ (from the Oxford Book of English Verse at Bartleby.com)
The Tretis of the Twa Mariit Wemen and the Wedo (Camelot Project, University of Rochester)
Various Manuscript Pages (Digital Library, National Library of Scotland)
— Dyer, John (1700?-1758?): Derives his prosodic importance from Grongar Hill, a poem in octosyllabic couplet, studied, with independence, from Milton, and helping to keep alive in that couplet the variety of iambic and trochaic cadence derived from catalexis, or alternation of eight- and seven-syllabled lines.
The Fleece and Selected Poems (Lives of the English Poets, Pennsylvania State University)
My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is (TheOtherPages.org)
— Fairfax, Edward (d. 1635): Very influential in the formation of the stopped antithetic couplet by his use of it at the close of the octaves of his translation of Tasso.
Five Songs (Lied and Art Songs at RecMusic.org)
Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered (University of California, Berkeley)
Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered (Gutenberg)
— Fitzgerald, Edward (1809-1883): Like Fairfax, famous for the prosodic feature of his translation of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. This is written in decasyllabic quatrains, the first, second, and fourth lines rhymed together, the third left blank.
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (University of Toronto)
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Bibliomania.com)
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Gutenberg)
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (from Harvard Classics, Bartleby.com)
Various Shorter Poems (OldPoetry.com)
Old Song (from Oxford Book of English Verse, Bartleby.com)
— Fletcher, Giles (1588-1623) and Phineas (v. inf. ): Both attempted alterations of the Spenserian by leaving out first one and then two lines. Phineas also a great experimenter in other directions.
Christ's Triumph after Death (excerpt) (University of Toronto)
Licia (Shakespeare-Sonnets.com)
Wooing Song (from Oxford Book of English Verse, Bartleby.com)
Two Poems (on Geocities.com)
— Fletcher, Phineas (1582-1650): v. sup.
The Purple Island (Renascence, University of Oregon)
The Purple Island (excerpt) (University of Toronto)
Sylva Poetica (Latin w/ translation) (University of California, Irvine)
Locustae Pietas Iesuitica (Latin) (George Mason University)
A Litany (from Oxford Book of English Verse, Bartleby.com)
The Divine Lover (from Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse, Bartleby.com)
Two Poems (on Geocities.com)
— Fletcher, John (1579-1625): The dramatist. Prosodically noticeable for his extreme leaning to redundance in dramatic blank verse. A master of lyric also.
The Faithful Shepherdess (University of Exeter)
Bonduca (University of Exeter)
The Wild Goose Chase (University of Exeter)
The Woman's Prize or The Tamer Tamed (University of Queensland)
A King and No King (with Beaumont) (University of Exeter)
The Knight of the Burning Pestle (with Beaumont) (University of Exeter)
The Knight of the Burning Pestle (with Beaumont) (Oxford Text Archive)
The Maid's Tragedy (with Beaumont) (University of Exeter)
The Maid's Tragedy (with Beaumont) (University of Queensland)
Philaster, or Love Lies A-bleeding (with Beaumont) (from Harvard Classics, Bartleby.com)
Henry the Eighth (with Shakespeare) (University of Victoria)
Henry the Eighth (with Shakespeare) (MIT)
Two Noble Kinsmen (with Shakespeare) (Gutenberg)
Queen of Corinth (with Othres) (University of Exeter)
The Double Marriage (with Othres) (University of Exeter)
The Prophetess (with Othres) (University of Exeter)
Three Poems (University of Exeter)
Three Poems (University of Toronto)
Sleep (from Oxford Book of English Verse, Bartleby.com)
Melancholy (from Oxford Book of English Verse, Bartleby.com)
Melancholy (from from Harvard Classics, Bartleby.com)
Aspatia's Song (from Oxford Book of English Verse, Bartleby.com)
Bridal Song (from Oxford Book of English Verse, Bartleby.com)
God Lyaeus (from Oxford Book of English Verse, Bartleby.com)
Love's Emblems (from Oxford Book of English Verse, Bartleby.com)
Away, Delights (from Oxford Book of English Verse, Bartleby.com)
Weep No More (from Oxford Book of English Verse, Bartleby.com)
Hear, Ye Ladies (from Oxford Book of English Verse, Bartleby.com)
Hymn to Pan (from Oxford Book of English Verse, Bartleby.com)
Beauty Clear and Fair (from Oxford Book of English Verse, Bartleby.com)
— Frere, John Hookham (1769-1846): Reintroduced the octave for comic purposes in the Monks and the Giants (1817) and taught it to Byron. Showed himself a master of varied metre in his translations of Aristophanes. Also dabbled in English hexameters, holding that extra-metrical syllables were permissible there.
The Friend of Humanity and the Knife Grinder (John Hookham Frere)
— Gascoigne, George (1525?-1577): Not unremarkable as a prosodist, from having tried various lyrical measures with distinct success, and as having given the first considerable piece of non-dramatic blank verse ("The Steel Glass") after Surrey. But chiefly to be mentioned for his remarkable Notes of Instruction on English verse, the first treatise on English prosody and a very shrewd one, despite some slips due to the time.
History, Volume I, Book IV, Chapter III, p. 328 — flashpaper/html pdf
Ancient Critical Essays Upon English Poets and Poesy , Edited by Joseph Haslewood [Contains Certaine Notes of Instruction Concerning the Making of Verse or Rhyme in English, from the Poesies of George Gascoigne, Esq., Richard Smith, London, 1575] (Robert Triphook, London, 1815 - Inernet Archive)
Complete Works, Volume I, Cambridge English Classics, Edited by John W. Cunliffe, Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, U.S.A. (Cambridge University Press, 1907 - Inernet Archive)
Complete Works, Volume II, Cambridge English Classics, Edited by John W. Cunliffe, Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, U.S.A. (Cambridge University Press, 1910 - Inernet Archive)
The Posies (Big Wind Press, Stormloader.com)
Flowers (Big Wind Press, Stormloader.com)
Dan Bartholomew of Bathe (Big Wind Press, Stormloader.com)
The Fruits of Warre (Big Wind Press, Stormloader.com)
Hearbes (Big Wind Press, Stormloader.com)
Weedes (Big Wind Press, Stormloader.com)
Song of Protheus (Luminarium.org)
The Glass Of Government, Third Chorus (Luminarium.org)
The Steele Glas and The Complainte of Phylomene (Renascence, University of Oregon)
Ariosto's Supposes (Big Wind Press, Stormloader.com)
Euripides' Jocasta (Trans. with Francis Kinwelmershe) (Big Wind Press, Stormloader.com)
— Glover, Richard (1712-1785): A very dull poet, but noteworthy for two points connected with prosody — his exaggeration of the Thomsonian heavy stop in the middle of blank verse lines, and the unrhymed choruses of his Medea.
extract from Leonides (Gutenberg, in Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Vol. 3, by George Gilfillan)
Leonides a poem in google books
— Godric, Saint (?-1170): The first named and known author of definitely English (that is Middle English) lyric, if not of definitely English (that is Middle English) verse altogether.
History, Volume I, Book I, Chapter II, p. 30 — html/flashpaper pdf
History of English Prosody, Volume I, Book I, Chapter II [links directly to page on this site], by George Saintsbury (on this site)
A Manual of English Literature, Historical and Critical, With an Appendix of English Metres, Fifth Edition, Revised, by Thomas Arnold of University Colege, Oxford [fragments] (Longman's Green and Co., London, 1885 - Google Books)
— Gower, John (1325?-1408): The most productive, and perhaps the best, older master of the fluent octosyllabic, rarely though sometimes varied in syllable length, and approximating most directly to the French model.
History, Volume I, Book II, Chapter III, p. 139 — html/flashpaper pdf
Confessio Amantis, or, Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins (Gutenberg)
Confessio Amantis, or, Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins (Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library)
Confessio Amantis, or, Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins (The Online Medieval and Classical Library)
— Hampole, Richard Rolle of, most commonly called by the place name (1290?-1347): Noteworthy for the occasional occurrence of complete decasyllabic couplets in the octosyllables of the Prick of Conscience. Possibly the author of poems in varied lyrical measures, some of great accomplishment.
History, Volume I, Book II, Chapter III, p. 135 — html/flashpaper pdf
Various Richard Roll Lyrics (Flying Dutchgirl: includes "Exhortation", "Cantus Amoris I", "Cantus Amoris 2", excerpt from "The Form of Living", "Gastly Gladnesse", "Thy Joy Be in the Love of Jesus", "Meditacio de passione christie", "The Nature of Love", "A Salutation to Jesus", "A Song of the Love of Jesus", "A Song of Love-Longing to Jesus", and "A Song of Mercy")
Fire of Love (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)
Ghastly Gladness (Canadian Content)
Incendium Amoris (in Latin) (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)
Ghastly Gladness (Canadian Content)
— Hawes, Stephen (d. 1523): Notable for the contrast between the occasional poetry of his Pastime of Pleasure and its sometimes extraordinarily bad rhyme-royal — which latter is shown without any relief in his other long poem, the Example of Virtue. The chief late example of fifteenth century degradation in this respect.
History, Volume I, Book III, Chapter II, p. 235 — html/flashpaper pdf
from Chapter XLII of The Pastime of Pleasure (University of Toronto)
An Epitaph (Bartleby)
The True Knight (Bartleby)
— Herrick, Robert (1591-1674): The best known (though not in his own or immediately succeeding times) of the "Caroline" poets. A great master of variegated metre, and a still greater one of sweet and various grace in diction.
Wikisource, Author: Robert Herrick (selected poems)
From the Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick, Arranged with introduction by Francis Turner Palgrave (Gutenberg)
Hesperides (The Complete Poetry of Robert Herrick)
To Anthea Who May Command Him Any Thing (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Kristin Hughes)
To the Virgins, to make much of Time by Robert Herrick (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Kristin Hughes)
Upon Julia's Clothes (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Kristin Hughes)
— Hunt, J. H. Leigh (1784-1859): Chiefly remarkable prosodically for his revival of the enjambed decasyllabic couplet; but a wide student, and a catholic appreciator and practitioner, of English metric generally. Probably influenced Keats much at first.
Abou Ben Adhem (Wikisource)
Deaths of Little Children 6 Sonnets (Sonnet Central)
Deaths of Little Children Selection of Poems (Leigh Hunt Cafe)
The Nile (Poets' Graves)
Deaths of Little Children Essay by Hunt (Wikisource)
Stories from the Italian Poets: with Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 Prose (Gutenberg)
Stories from the Italian Poets: with Lives of the Writers, Volume 2 Prose (Gutenberg)
On the Realities of Imagination Essay by Hunt (Wikisource)
— Jonson, Benjamin (Ben) (1573?-1637): A great practical prosodist, and apparently (like his successor, and in some respects analogue, Dryden) only by accident not a teacher of the study. Has left a few remarks, as it is, eulogizing, but in rather equivocal terms, the decasyllabic couplet, objecting to Donne's "not keeping of accent," to Spenser's metre for what exact reason we know not, and to the English hexameter apparently. His practice much plainer sailing. A fine though rather hard master of blank verse; excellent at the couplet itself; but in lyric, as far as form goes, near perfection in the simpler and more classical adjustments, as well as in pure ballad measure.
The Alchemist (Gutenberg)
Cynthia's Revels (Gutenberg)
Discoveries Made Upon Men and Matter and Some Poems (Gutenberg)
Epicoene: Or, the Silent Woman (Gutenberg)
Every Man in His Humour (Gutenberg)
Every Man out of His Humour (Gutenberg)
The Poetaster (Gutenberg)
Sejanus: His Fall (Gutenberg)
Volpone; Or, the Fox (Gutenberg)
Various Works (Wikisource)
The Forest (complete) (Luminarium)
20 poems and Timber (University of Toronto)
Volpone, Bartholomew Fair, Catiline, Epicoene, Every Man in His Humour, Sejanus (eServer Drama Collection)
— Keats, John (1795-1821): One of the chief examples, among the greater English poets, of sedulous and successful study of prosody; in this contrasting remarkably with his contemporary, and in some sort analogue, Shelley. Began by much rending of Spenser and of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century poets, in following whose enjambed couplet he was also, to some extent, a disciple of Leigh Hunt. Exemplified the dangers as well as the beauties of this in Endymion, and corrected it by stanza-practice in Isabella, the Eve of .St. Agnes, and his great Odes, as well as by a study of Dryden which produced the stricter but more splendid couplet of Lamia. Strongly Miltonic, but with much originality also, in the blank verse of Hyperion and a great master of the freer sonnet, which he had studied in the Elizabethans. Modified the ballad measure in La Belle Dame Sans Merci with astonishing effect. and in the Eve of Saint Mark recovered (perhaps from Gower) a handling of the octosyllable which remained undeveloped till Mr. William Morris took it up.
Lamia (Gutenberg)
Poems 1817 (Gutenberg)
Just about everything (JohnKeats.com)
La Belle Dame Sans Merci and Ode on Melancholy (LibriVox MP3/ogg vorbis - La Belle Dame read by elodea; Ode read by Caitlin Hier)
Fancy and To Hope (LibriVox MP3/ogg vorbis - read by Kristin Hughes)
Ode on a Grecian Urn (LibriVox MP3/ogg vorbis - read by Linda Wilcox)
Ode on a Grecian Urn (LibriVox MP3/ogg vorbis - read by Bryan Farrow)
Ode to a Nightingale (LibriVox MP3/ogg vorbis - read by Kristin Hughes)
Ode to a Nightingale and To Autumn (LibriVox MP3/ogg vorbis - read by Jason Oakley)
On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer (LibriVox MP3/ogg vorbis - read by Laura Passin)
When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be (LibriVox MP3/ogg vorbis - read by Nomenphile)
Written on the Top of Ben Nevis (LibriVox MP3/ogg vorbis - read by Julian Jamison)
— Kingsley, Charles (1819-1875): A poet very notable in proportion to the quantity of his work, for variety and freshness of metrical command in lyric. But chiefly so for the verse of Andromeda, which, aiming at accentual dactylic hexameter, converts itself into a five-foot anapaestic line with anacrusis and hypercatalexis, and in so doing entirely shakes off the ungainly and slovenly shamble of the Evangeline type.
Andromeda and Other Poems (Gutenberg)
Prose Idylls, New and Old (Gutenberg)
Oh! That We Two Were Maying, The Sands of Dee, The Three Fishers, and Young and Old (University of Toronto)
— Landor, Walter Savage (1775-1864): A great master of form in all metres, but, in his longer poems and more regular measures, a little formal in the less favourable, sense. In his smaller lyrics (epigrammatic in the Greek rather than the modern use) hardly second to Ben Jonson, whom he resembles not a little. His phrase of singular majesty and grace.
Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare (Gutenberg)
Count Julian (Gutenberg)
Gebir (Gutenberg)
14 Poems (University of Toronto)
20 Poems (EnglishVerse.com)
Eight Lyrical Poems (Rose Aylmer, Late Leaves, Of Clementina, On an Eclipse of the Moon, Separation, Sonnet: To Robert Browning, Verse, and FinisEaglesWeb.com - Real Audio, read by Walter Rufus Eagles)
Late Leaves (LibriVox MP3/ogg vorbis - read by Peter Yearsley)
— Langland, William (fourteenth century): The probable name of the pretty certainly single author of the remarkable alliterative poem called The Vision of Piers Plowman. Develops the alliterative metre itself in a masterly fashion through the successive versions of his poem, but also exhibits most notably the tendency of the line to fall into definitely metrical shapes — decasyllable, Alexandrine, and fourteener, — with not infrequent anapaestic correspondences.
History, Book II, Chapter V, p. 179
The Vision of Piers Plowman (Complete) (Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library)
Piers Plowman: The Prologue (University of Toronto)
— Layamon (late twelfth and early thirteenth century): Exhibits in the Brut, after a fashion hardly to be paralleled elsewhere, the passing of one metrical system into another. May have intended to write unrhymed alliteratives, but constantly passes into complete rhymed octosyllabic couplet, and generally provides something between the two. A later version, made most probably, if not certainly, after his death, accentuates the transfer.
History, Volume I, Book I, Chapter II, p. 36 — html/flashpaper pdf
Brut (MS Cotton Otho, Complete) (Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library)
Brut (MS Cotton Caligula, Complete) (Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library)
Roman de Brut (Gutenberg)
— Lewis, Matthew Gregory (1775-1818): A very minor poet, and hardly a major man of letters in any other way than that of prosody. Here, however, in consequence partly of an early visit to Germany, he acquired love for, and command of, the anapaestic measures, which he taught to greater poets than himself from Scott downwards, and which had not a little to do with the progress of the Romantic Revival.
Alfonso, King of Castile: a tragedy, in five acts (Internet Archive)
The Monk (a novel, but his preface is "Imitation of Horace, Ep. 20.--Bk I" (Gutenberg)
— Locker (latterly Locker-Lampson), Frederick (1821-1895): An author of "verse of society" who brought out the serio-comic power of much variegated and indented metre with remarkable skill.
Our Photographs, Rotten Row, and To My Grandmother (University of Toronto)
To My Grandmother, To An Old Muff, My Mistress's Boots, Piccadilly, Loulou and her Cat, A Word That Makes Us Linger, and A Terrible Infant (Gutenberg eBooks Poetry Collection, Poets 'L')
To My Grandmother (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Multiple Versions, Read by Christina Zhu, Dreama Lynn, JemmaBlythe, and Sean McKinley)
— Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth (1807-1882): An extremely competent American practitioner of almost every metre that he tried, except perhaps the unrhymed terza-rima, which is difficult and may be impossible in English. Established the popularity of the loose accentual hexameter in Evangeline, and did surprisingly well with unvaried trochaic dimeter in Hiawatha. His lyrical metres not of the first distinction, but always musical and craftsmanlike.
Selected Poems (poetryfoundation.org)
The Bridge (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Arctura)
Catawba Wine (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Mark F. Smith)
The Children's Hour (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Robert Garrison)
Christmas Bells (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Multiple Versions, Read by Annie Coleman, Catharine Eastman, Claire Goget, Douglas D. Anderson, JemmaBlythe, Kristin Hughes, Kara Shallenberg, Rebecca Dekker, and William Haseltine)
Christmas Bells and The Wreck of the Hesperus (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by pkolter [Christmas Bells] and Tony Hightower [The Wreck of the Hesperus])
The Day Is Done and Paul Revere's Ride (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Robert Garrison [The Day is Done] and Mark F. Smith [Paul Revere's Ride])
The Haunted Chamber and The Rainy Day (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Peter Yearsley)
The Village Blacksmith (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Multiple Versions, Read by Andrea L., Christina Zhu, David Barnes, Ezwa, Glen Hallstrom, Kristin Hughes, Ed Good, Mark F. Smith, Michael Sirois, Sean McKinley, and Sean McGaughey)
The Village Blacksmith (Reely's Poetry Pages, embedded audio reading)
— Lydgate, John (1370-1450?): The most industrious and productive of the followers of Chaucer, writing indifferently rhyme-royal, "riding rhyme," and octosyllabic couplet, but especially the first and last, as well as ballades and probably other lyrical work. Lydgate seems to have made an effort to accommodate the breaking-down pronunciation of the time — especially as regarded final e's — to these measures; but as a rule he had very little success. One of his varieties of decasyllable is elsewhere stigmatized. He is least abroad in the octosyllable, but not very effective even there.
History, Volume I, Book III, Chapter II, p. 218 — html/flashpaper pdf
Disguising at Hertford (Gutenberg)
Partial Transcription of John Lydgate's "Fall of Princes" (XML encoded transcription of the manuscript in parallel with the manuscript image - Text Encoding Initiative Consortium, this one by Martin Holmes University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre British Columbia Canada )
The Lives of Saints Edmund and Fremund (Hypertext version by Stephen R. Reimer, University of Alberta; Edmonton, Canada)
The Siege of Thebes (Prologue) (Hypertext version with notes, John M. Bowers, TEAMS Middle English Texts)
The Lyfe of Seynt Margarete (Hypertext version, Sherry L. Reames, TEAMS Middle English Texts)
Vox ultima Crucis (Bartleby)
The Testament of John Lydgate (excerpt) (University of Toronto)
— Macaulay, Thomas Babington (1800-1859): Best known prosodically by his spirited and well beaten-out ballad measure in the Lays of Ancient Rome. Sometimes, as in "The Last Buccaneer," tried less commonplace movements with strange success.
Dies Irae, Epitaph on a Jacobite, Horatius, and The Last Buccaneer (University of Toronto)
The Lays of Ancient Rome (Gutenberg)
The Lays of Ancient Rome (JerryPournelle.com html setting of the Gutenberg Text plus a brief original essay)
The Lays of Ancient Rome in pdf (Palimpsest Online Penn State)
Histories, Essays, Speeches, and Other Writings (Gutenberg)
Opposing Copyright Extension (Law Pages, Arizona State University)
Horatius at the Bridge (in two parts) (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Kara Shallenberg)
The Keeping of the Bridge (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Andy Minter )
— Maginn, William (1793-1842): Deserves to be mentioned with Barham as a chief initiator of the earlier middle nineteenth century in the ringing and swinging comic measures which have done so much to supple English verse, and to accustom the general ear to its possibilities.
I find many references, but no poems. If you're aware of any poem by Godric freely available on the web, please let me know and I'll link to it.
— Marlowe, Christopher (1664-1693): The greatest master, among pre-Shakespearian writers, of the blank verse line for splendour and might, as Peele was for sweetness and brilliant colour. Seldom, though sometimes, goes beyond the "single-moulded" form; but availed himself to the very utmost of the majesty to which that form rather specially lends itself. Very great also in couplet (which he freely "enjambed") and in miscellaneous measure when he tried it.
The Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe: An Electronic Edition (Perseus - Tufts)
The Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe in Modern Spelling (Peter Farey's Marlowe Page)
Hero and Leander, The Passionate Shepherd to His Love, The Tragedy of Doctor Faustus, and Tamburlaine (Wikisource)
The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus and Massacre at Paris in pdf (Palimpsest Online - Penn State)
Hero and Leander (excerpt) and The Passionate Shepherd to his Love (University of Toronto)
Marlowe's Translation of Ovid's Elegia 5: Corinnae concubitus (Luminarium)
from Jupiter and Ganymede (Fordham University)
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Alan Davis-Drake)
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Catharine Eastman )
— Milton, John (1608-1674): The last of the four chief masters of English prosody. Began by various experiments in metre, both in and out of lyric stanza — reaching, in the "Nativity" hymn, almost the maximum of majesty in concerted measures. In L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, and the Arcades passed to a variety of the octosyllabic couplet, which had been much practiced by Shakespeare and others, but developed its variety and grace yet further, though he did not attempt the full Spenserian or Christabel variation. In Comus continued this, partly, with lyrical extensions, but wrote the major part in blank verse — not irreminiscent of the single-moulded form, but largely studied off Shakespeare and Fletcher, and with his own peculiar turns already given to it. In Lycidas employed irregularly rhymed paragraphs of mostly decasyllabic lines. Wrote some score of fine sonnets, adjusted more closely to the usual Italian models than those of most of his predecessors. After an interval, produced, in Paradise Lost , the first long poem in blank verse, and the greatest non-dramatic example of the measure ever seen — admitting the fullest variation and substitution of foot and syllable, and constructing verse paragraphs of almost stanzaic effect by varied pause and contrasted stoppage and overrunning. Repeated this, with perhaps some slight modifications, in Paradise Regained. Finally, in Samson Agonistes employed blank-verse dialogue with choric interludes rhymed elaborately — though in an afterthought note to Paradise Lost he had denounced rhyme — and arranged on metrical schemes sometimes unexampled in English.
Annotated Links to Milton's Work and Life Online (the milton-L homepage - University of Richmond)
Poems (1645), Poemata, Poems &c. Upon Several Occasions (1673 - Selection), Latin Poems from Milton's Commonplace Book, Paradise Lost (1674), Paradise Regain'd (1671), and Samson Agonistes (1671) plus prose and criticism (The Milton Reading Room - Dartmouth)
Paradise Lost (1667) (University of Virginia)
A Paraphrase On Psalm 114 1673 (University of Virginia)
Psalm 136 (1673) (University of Virginia)
Psalms I-VIII and LXXX-LXXXVIII Done into Verse (1673) (University of Virginia)
To The Lord General Cromwell May 1652 (1673) (University of Virginia)
To Mr. Cyriak Skinner Upon His Blindness (1673) (University of Virginia)
To Sr Henry Vane The Younger (1673) (University of Virginia)
Comus, Shorter Poems, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Psalm Paraphrases, Samson Agonistes in pdf and html (Renascence Editions - University of Oregon, by Judy Boss)
Paradise Lost, Areopagitica, L'Alegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas in pdf (Palimpsest Online - Penn State)
Paradise Lost (1674), Paradise Lost (1678), Paradise Lost (1688), Paradise Lost (1691), Paradise Regained (1671), Paradise Regained (1680), Poetry (1695), Works (1698), Poems (1645)) (John Geraghty's Digital Facsimile Project)
In Quintum Novembris (1626 - Latin text and English translation) (A hypertext critical edition, by Dana F. Sutton, The University of California, Irvine)
On Shakspeare, Captain or Colonel, O Nightingale, How soon hath Time, Methought I saw my late espoused Saint (Real Audio, Read by Kevin J.T. Creamer, University of Richmond/milton-L home page)
The Peaceful Night (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Douglas D. Anderson)
Sonnet on His Blindness (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Kara Shallenberg )
— Moore, Thomas (1779-1852): A very voluminous poet in the most various metres, and a competent master of all. But especially noticeable as a trained and practicing musician, who wrote a very large proportion of his lyrics directly to music, and composed or adapted settings for many of them. The double process has resulted in great variety and sweetness, but occasionally also in laxity which, from the prosodic point of view, is somewhat excessive.
The Complete Poems (Gutenberg)
A Ballad: The Lake of the Dismal Swamp, Lalla Rookh (excerpt), Oft, in the Stilly Night (Scotch Air) The Time I've Lost in Wooing, When 'Midst the Gay I Meet (University of Toronto)
The Light of Other Days (The Harvard Classics 1909-1914 - Bartleby) and different location The Light of Other Days (The Oxford Book of English Verse 1919 - Bartleby)
Pro Patria Mori (The Harvard Classics 1909-1914 - Bartleby)
Meeting of the Waters (The Harvard Classics 1909-1914 - Bartleby)
The Last Rose of Summer (The Harvard Classics 1909-1914 - Bartleby)
The Harp that Once Through Tara's Halls (The Harvard Classics 1909-1914 - Bartleby)
A Canadian Boat-Song (The Harvard Classics 1909-1914 - Bartleby)
The Journey Onwards (The Harvard Classics 1909-1914 - Bartleby)
The Young May Moon (The Harvard Classics 1909-1914 - Bartleby) and different location The Young May Moon (The Oxford Book of English Verse 1919 - Bartleby)
The Irish Peasant to His Mistress (The Oxford Book of English Verse 1919 - Bartleby)
Exho (The Harvard Classics 1909-1914 - Bartleby)
At the Mid Hour of Night (The Harvard Classics 1909-1914 - Bartleby) and different location At the Mid Hour of Night (The Oxford Book of English Verse 1919 - Bartleby)
Cupid Stung, The Harp That Once Through Tara's Halls, The Last Rose of Summer, and The Light of Other Days (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Kara Shallenberg )
The Last Rose of Summer (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Peter Yearsley)
— Morris, William (1834-1896): 0ne of the best and most variously gifted of recent prosodists. In his early work, The Defense of Guenevere, achieved a great number of metres, on the most varied schemes, with surprising effect; in his longer productions, Jason and The Earthly Paradise, handled enjambed couplets, octosyllabic and decasyllabic, with an extraordinary compound of freedom and precision. In Love is Enough tried alliterative and irregular rhythm with unequal but sometimes beautiful results; and in Sigurd the Volsung fingered the old fourteener into a sweeping narrative verse of splendid quality and no small range.
A Large Selection: Chants for Socialists, Child Christopher and Goldilind the Fair; A Dream of John Ball: a king's lesson; The Hollow Land; Hopes and Fears for Art; The House of the Wolfings; News from Nowhere, or, an Epoch of Rest : being some chapters from a utopian romance; Old French Romances; The Pilgrims of Hope; Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough; The Roots of the Mountains, Wherein Is Told Somewhat of the Lives of the Men of Burgdale; Signs of Change; The Story of Grettir the Strong (as Translator); The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs; The Story of the Glittering Plain; or, the land of Living Men; The Story of the Volsungs (as Translator); The Tables Turned, or, Nupkins Awakened; A Socialist Interlude; The Water of the Wondrous Isles; The Well at the World's End: a tale; Wood Beyond the World; The World of Romance, being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine (Gutenberg)
An essay with references and links on-site to: Palomydes' Quest, St. Agnes' Convent, The Chapel of Lyoness, A Good Knight in Prison, Near Avalon, Sir Galahad: A Christmas Mystery, Defence of Guenevere, King Arthur's Tomb (Camelot Project at the University of Rochester)
The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems (1858), The Earthly Paradise (1868-70), Poems by the Way (1891) (The Victorian Web)
Poems by the Way (Marxist Internet Archive)
Poems by the Way (University of Adelaide, Australia)
Love Is Enough (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Hugh McGuire)
— Orm/Ormulum (12th c.?): A monk of the twelfth to the thirteenth century who composed a long versification of thc Calendar Gospels in unrhymed, strictly syllabic, fifteen-syllabled verse, lending itself to regular division in eights and sevens. A very important evidence as to the experimenting tendency of the time and to the strivings for a new English prosody.
History, Volume I, Book I, Chapter II, p. 38 — html/flashpaper pdf
The Electronic Ormulum(The Ormulum Project - Stockholm University
The Ormulum, with the notes and glossary, of R.M. White (1878)(Internet Archives
— O'Shaughnessy, Arthur W. E. (1844-1881): ) A lyrist of great originality, and with a fingering peculiar to himself though most nearly resembling that of Edgar Poe.
Ode(University of Toronto)
Ode(Modern British Poetry, 1920; Ed. Louis Untermeyer - Bartleby)
— Peele, George (1558?-1597?): Remarkable for softening the early decasyllable as Marlowe sublimed it.
History, Volume I, Book IV, Chapter IV, p. 346 — html/flashpaper pdf
[Under heading "The Marlowe Group"]
The Works of George Peele(ed. by A. H. Bullen, Boston 1888 - Google Books)
The Works of George Peele(A hypertext edition by Dana F. Sutton The University of California, Irvine - Philological Museum)
Fair and Fair(The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1919 - Bartleby)
A Farewell to Arms (To Queen Elizabeth)(The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1919 - Bartleby)
Paris and Œnone (The Harvard Classics, 1909-14 - Bartleby)
A Farewell Entitled to the Famous and Fortunate Generals of our English Forces(University of Toronto)
— Percy, Thomas (1729-1811): As an original verse maker, of very small value, and as a meddler with older verse to patch and piece it, somewhat mischievous; but as the editor of the Reliques, to be hallowed and canonized for that his deed, in every history of English prosody and poetry.
Barbara Allen's Cruelty; The Bonny Earl of Murray; Edward, Edward; and Sweet William's Ghost (University of Toronto)
Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (complete) (Philadelphia, 1876 - Google Books)
Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, Volume I(Edinburgh, 1858 - Google Books)
Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, Volume I (Edinburgh, 1858 - Google Books)
Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, Volume II (London, 1765 - Google Books)
Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, Volume III( Leipzig, 1866 - Google Books)
— Poe, Edgar Allen (1809-1849): The greatest master of original prosodic effect that the United States have produced, and an instinctively and generally right (though in detail, hasty, ill-informed, and crude) essayist on points of prosodic doctrine. Produced little, and that little not always equal; but at his best an unsurpassable master of music in verse and phrase.
The Poems of Edgar Allen Poe (online variorum edition) (Edgar Allen Poe Society of Baltimore)
Poems (Wikisource)
The Work of Edgar Allen Poe (University of Innsbruck)
The Work of Edgar Allen Poe (Edited by Kellis Campbell, Ginn and Company, 1917 - Google Books)
The Complete Poems of Edgar Allen Poe, with One Hundred New Illustrations by Harry C. Edwards (Frekerick A. Stokes Company, 1895 - Google Books)
Tamerlane and Other Poems, First Published at Boston in 1827 and now First Republished from a Unique Copy of the Original Edition With Preface (George Redway, London, 1884 - Google Books)
Poems by Edgar Allen Poe, Complete, With an Original Memoir by R.H. Stoddard and Illustrations (George Routledge and Sons, London, 1875 - Google Books)
The Raven (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Chris Goringe)
— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744): Practically devoted himself to one metre, and one form of it — the stopped heroic couplet, — subjected as much as possible to a rigid absence of licence; dropping (though he sometimes used them) the triplets and Alexandrines, which even Dryden had admitted; adhering to an almost mathematical centrical pause; employing, by preference, short, sharp rhymes with little echo in them; and but very rarely, though with at least one odd exception, allowing even the possibility of a trisyllabic foot. An extraordinary artist on this practically single string, but gave himself few chances on others.
Large Selection of Texts: An Essay on Criticism; An Essay on Man; The Iliad (as Translator); Memoir of Fr. Vincent De Paul, Religious of La Trappe (as Translator);The Odyssey (as Translator);The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, Volume 1; The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, Volume 2; The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems (Gutenberg)
Large Selection: The Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man; Essay on Criticism; The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope: Volume One; The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope: Volume Two; The Odyssey of Homer Translated by Alexander Pope ; The Iliad of Homer Translated by Alexander Pope (All in pdf) (Palimpsest onLine - Penn State)
Selected Poems: The Dunciad: Book IV (excerpt); Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady; Eloisa to Abelard; Epistles to Several Persons: Epistle II: To a Lady on the Characters of Women; Epistles to Several Persons: Epistle; IV Epistles to Several Persons: Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot; An Essay on Criticism; An Essay on Man: Epistles I & II (complete); Epistles III & IV (excerpts); Preface to his Translation of Homer's Iliad (1715); The Iliad, Book VI (excerpt); The Iliad, Book XII (excerpt); Imitations of Horace (Epistle: to Augustus); Pastorals (excerpt); The Rape of the Lock: Cantos 1 - 5); Solitude: An Ode; You know where you did despise (University of Toronto)
Rape of the Lock, Hypertext Versions (The Rape of the Lock Home Page)
Selected Texts: An Essay on Criticism (1711); The Rape of the Lock (1712 to 1717); Eloisa to Abelard (1717);Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady (1717); The Iliad of Homer (poetic interpretation) (1715 to 1720); Essay on Man (1734) (Wikisource)
An Essay on Criticism (The Eserver Poetry Collection)
Essay on Man, Epistle I; Essay on Man, Epistle II; Essay on Man, Epistle III; Essay on Man, Epistle IV; Essay on Man, The Design;(The Eserver Poetry Collection)
Moral Essay, Epistle II: To A Lady (The Eserver Poetry Collection)
Rape of the Lock (The Eserver Poetry Collection)
The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, To Which there is Prefixed a Life of the Author, Volume I (J. Gladding " Co., Bristol, 1836- Google Books)
The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope in Four Volumes: Volume II (Nathaniel Cook, London, 1853- Google Books)
Works of Alexander Pope, esq., Volume VI, Containing His Miscellaneous Pieces in Verse and Prose (Nathaniel Cooke, London, 1853 - Google Books)
Works of Alexander Pope, esq., in Verse and Prose, in Ten Volumes, Volume V. (The Dunciad) (London, 1806 - Google Books)
The Rape of the Lock, An Heroi-Comical Poem, Adorned with Plates (C. Bensly, London, 1798 - Google Books)
Eloisa to Abelard (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Kristin Hughes)
Solitude (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Kara Shallenberg)
— Praed, Winthrop Mackworth (1802-1839): An early nineteenth century Prior. Not incapable of serious verse, and hardly surpassed in laughter. His greatest triumph, the adaptation of the three-foot anapaest, alternately hypercatalectic and acatalectic or exact, which had been a ballad-burlesque metre as early as Gay, had been partly ensouled by Byron in one piece, but was made his own by Praed, and handed down by him to Mr. Swinburne to be yet further sublimated.
Everyday Characters I: The Vicar (University of Toronto)
Everyday Characters: My Partner, from Poems of Life and Manners in The Poems (1844) Vol. II (University of Pennsylvania)
Fairy Song (The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1919 - Bartleby)
The Vicar (The A Victorian Anthology, 1837-1895 (1895) - Bartleby)
The Newly-Wedded (The A Victorian Anthology, 1837-1895 (1895) - Bartleby)
Poetical Works of Winthrop Mackworth Praed, Now First Collected by Rufus W. Griswold (Henry G. Langly, New York, 1844 - Google Books)
Lillian and Other Poems, Now First Collected (Redfield, New York, 1852 - Google Books)
The Poems, Revised and Complete Edition, with a Memoir by the Rev. Derwent Coleridge, in Two Volumes, Volume I (W.J. Widdleton, New York, 1866 - Google Books)
The Poems, Revised and Complete Edition, with a Memoir by the Rev. Derwent Coleridge, in Two Volumes, Volume II (W.J. Widdleton, New York, 1866 - Google Books)
— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721): Of special prosodic importance for his exercises in anapaestic metres and in octosyllabic couplet, both of which forms he practically established in the security of popular favour, when the stopped heroic couplet was threatening monopoly. His phrase equally suitable to the verse de societé of which he was our first great master.
Horace, Lib. I, Epist. IX, Imitated; A Simile; To a Child of Quality, Five Years Old, the Author Suppos'd Forty; To A Lady; and To Chloe Jealous (University of Toronto)
To a Child of Quality, Five Years Old, 1704. The Author then Forty (The Harvard Classics 1909-14 - Bartleby)
Cloe (The Harvard Classics 1909-14 - Bartleby)
he Dying Adrian to His Soul (The Harvard Classics 1909-14 - Bartleby)
Epigram (The Harvard Classics 1909-14 - Bartleby)
The Question to Lisetta (The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1919 - Bartleby)
To a Child of Quality, Five Years Old, 1704. The Author then Forty (The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1919 - Bartleby)
Song (The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1919 - Bartleby)
On My Birthday, July 21 (The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1919 - Bartleby)
The Lady who offers her Looking-Glass to Venus (The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1919 - Bartleby)
A Letter to Lady Margaret Cavendish Holles-Harley, when a Child (The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1919 - Bartleby)
For my own Monument (The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1919 - Bartleby)
The Poetical Works, With Memoir and Critical Dissertation by the Rev. George Gilfillan (James Nichol, Edinburgh; James Nisbet & Co., London; W. Robertson, Dublin; 1858 - Google Books)
The Poetical Works, Volume I (Bell and Daldy, London, 1866 - Google Books)
The Poetical Works, Volume I, A New Edition Revised with Memior by Reginald Brimley Johnson (George Bell and Sons, London and New York, 1907 - Google Books)
The Poetical Works, Volume II, With A Life, by Rev. John Mitford (Little, Brown, and Company, Boston, 1853 - Google Books)
Dialogues of the Dead and Other Works in Prose and Verse (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1907 - Google Books)
Selected Poems, With an Introduction and Notes by Austin Dobson (Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., London, 1889 - Google Books)
Poems on Several Occasions (Jacob Tonson and John Barber, London, 1718 - Google Books)
— Robert of Gloucester (fl. c. 1280): Nomen clarum in prosody, as being apparently the first copious and individual producer of the great fourteener metre, which, with the octosyllabic couplet, is the source, or at least the oldest, of all modern English forms.
History, Volume I, Book I, Chapter III, p. 67 — html/flashpaper pdf
Robert of Gloucester's Chronicle, Reign of William the Conquerer From Cotton MS. Caligula A. xi. leaves 107-114, in Specimens of Early English with Introduction, Notes, and Glossarial Index, Part II: From Robert of Gloucester to Gower, A.D. 1298 - A.D. 1393 by Richard Morris and William W. Skeat (pg. xxxvii ff.) (The Clarendon Press, Oxford 1872 - Google Books
King Arthur's Coronation, in The History of English Poetry: From the Close of the Eleventh Century to the Commencement of the Eighteenth Century, in Three Volumes, by Thomas Warton, Volume I (pg. 47 ff.) (Thomas Tegg, London 1840 - Google Books
II. The Southern Dialect, Robert of Gloucester's Chronicle: How the Normans Came to England, in A Middle English Reader, Edited with Introduction, Notes, and Glossary Oliver Farrar Emerson (pg. 203 ff.) (MacMillan Company, New York; MacMillan & Co. Ltd., London 1905 - Google Books
In Praise of England, from Riming Chronicle: in English Prose and Verse from Beowulf to Stevenson (Henry Holt and Company, 1915 - Google Books
— Rossetti, Christina Georgina (1830-1894): and Dante Gabriel (v. inf.) A brother and sister who rank extraordinarily high in our flock. Of mainly Italian blood, though thoroughly Anglicized, and indeed partly English by blood itself, they produced the greatest English sonnets on the commoner Italian model, and displayed almost infinite capacity in other metres. Miss Rossetti had the greater tendency to metrical experiment, and perhaps the more strictly lyrical gift of the song kind; her brother, the severer command of sculpturesque but richly coloured form in poetry.
Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems; and Poems (Gutenberg)
Selected Poems (A. Eisenberg, Hessen/Germany (alias AnnieIce))
Selected Poems (Victorian Web)
Selected Poems (Victorian Web)
Poetical Works, With Memoir, Notes, &c by William Michael Rossetti (MacMillin and Co. Ltd., London 1904 - Google Books)
An End (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Matthew Royal)
The Queen of Hearts (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Betsie Bush)
The Thread of Life (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Alan Davis-Drake)
When I Am Dead My Dearest (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Mike Barlow)
— Rossetti, Dante Gabriel (1828-1882) (v. sup.)
Rossetti Archive Books (Various editions, facsimile and transcription: includes Ballads and Sonnets, 1881; Ballads and Sonnets, 1881 Proofs; The Collected Works, 1886; Dante and His Circle, 1874; Dante and His Circle, 1861; Dante at Verona and Other Poems, 1860 - 1861; The Early Italian Poets, 1861; Poems, Privately Printed, A2 Proofs, c. September 20, 1869; Poems, Privately Printed, A Proofs, c. September 13 1869; Poems, Privately Printed, First Trial Book, c. October 3 1869; Poems, Privately Printed, Penkill Proofs, July - August 1869; Poems, Privately Printed, Second Trial Book, October 30 - November 25, 1869; Poems, Tauchnitz Edition, November 1873; Poems, A New Edition, 1881; The Works, 1911; and many other manuscripts of poetry and prose(Rossetti Archive))
The House of Life (Gutenberg)
Selected Poems (University of Toronto)
Various Poems (in: The Harvard Classics, 1909-14; The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1919; and A Victorian Anthology 1837-1895, 1895 - Bartleby)
— Sackville, Thomas (1536-1608): One of the last and best practitioners of the old rhyme-royal of Chaucer, and one of the first experimenters in dramatic blank verse.
History, Volume I, Book IV, Chapter III, p. 332 — html/flashpaper pdf
The Tragedy Of Gorboduc; Whereof three Acts were written by Thomas Nortone, and the two last by Thomas Sackuyle (Renascence Editions)
The Mirror for Magistrates: The Induction (University of Toronto)
The Works of Thomas Sackville, Afterwards Lord Treasurer to Queen Elizabeth and Earl of Dorset, Edited by the Hon. and Rev. Reginald Sackville-West (John Russell Smith, London, 1859 - Google Books)
The Works of Thomas Sackville, Afterwards Lord Treasurer to Queen Elizabeth and Earl of Dorset, Edited by the Hon. and Rev. Reginald Sackville-West (John Russell Smith, London, 1859 - Google Books)
Selection in Specimens of the Brittish Poets, With Biographical and Critical Notices and An Essay on English Poetry, by Thomas Campbell, in Seven Volumes, Vol. II, Chaucer, 1400, To Beaumont, 1628 (John Murray, London, 1819 - Google Books)
— Sandys, George (1578-1644): Has traditional place after Fairfax and with Waller (Sir John Beaumont, who ought to rank perhaps before these, being generally omitted) as a practitioner of stopped heroic couplet. Also used In Memoriam quatrain.
Ovid's Metamorphosis Englished (University of Virginia)
Poetical Works of George Sandys, Now First Collected, With an Introduction and Notes by the Rev. Richard Hooper, Vicar of Upton and Aston Upthorpe, Berks, and Editor of Chapman's Homer (John Russell, London, 1872 - Google Books)
— Sayers, Frank (1763-1817): An apostle, both in practice and preaching, of the unrhymed verse — noteworthy at the close of the close of the eighteenth century — which gives him his place in the story.
No Wikipedia Entry
Collective Works of the Late Dr. Sayers; To Which Have Been Prefaced Some Biographic Particulars, by W. Taylor of Norwich (Matchett and Stevenson, Norwich, 1823 - Google Books)
— Scott, Sir Walter (1771-1832): The facts of his prosodic influence and performance hardly deniable, but its nature and value often strangely misrepresented. Was probably influenced by Lewis in adopting (from the German) anapaestic measures; and certainly and most avowedly influenced by Coleridge (whose Christabel he heard read or recited long before publication) in adopting equivalenced octosyllabic couplet and ballad metres in narrative verse. But probably derived as much from the old ballads and romances themselves, which he knew as no one else then did, and as few have known them since. Applied the method largely in his verse-romances, but was also a master of varied forms of lyric, no mean proficient in the Spenserian and in fragments, at least, of blank verse.
The Lady of the Lake (Gutenberg)
The Lady of the Lake, Edited with Notes by William J. Rolfe, Formerly Head Master of the High School, Cambridge, Mass. (Boston, 1883 - pdf - Penn State Electronic Texts)
The Lay of the Last Minstrel; A Poem in Six Cantos, from The Complete Works, Vol. 1 of 7, Connor and Cooke, New York, 1833 (Brontë Texts, Sources, and Criticism - State University of New York, Plattsburgh)
Marmion (Gutenberg)
Some Poems (Gutenberg)
Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Volume I (Gutenberg)
Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Volume II (Gutenberg)
Selected Poems (Gutenberg)
The Bridal of Triermain (Camelot Project - University of Rochester)
All Verse of Scott at Bartleby (The Harvard Classics, 1909-14; The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1919; - Bartleby)
Selected Poems and Extracts (University of Toronto)
Bridal of Triermain, Harold the Dauntless, Field of Waterloo, and Other Poems (Robert Cadell, Edinburgh, 1836 - Google Books)
Complete Poetical Works (Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1900 - Google Books)
Complete Poetical Works of Walter Scott, With a Biographical and Critical Memoir by Francis Turner Palgrave, Late Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford (MacMillan and Co, London, 1873 - Google Books)
Poetical Works of Walter Scott, Illustrated by F. Gilbert (John Dicks, London, 1868 - Google Books)
The Poetical Works of Walter Scott, Complete in One Volume (A. and W. Galignani, Paris, 1827 - Google Books)
Oxford Complete Edition: The Poetical Works of Walter Scott, With the Author's Introductions and Notes, Edited by J. Logie Robertson (Henry Frowde, London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, New York and Toronto, 1904 - Google Books)
— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616):The catholicos or universal master, as of English poetry so of English prosody. In the blank verse of his plays, and in the songs interspersed in them, as well as in his immature narrative poems and more mature sonnets, every principle of English versification can be found exemplified, less deliberately "machined " it may be, than in Milton or Tennyson, but in absolutely genuine and often not earlier found form.
Complete Works (OpenSource Shakespeare, An Experiment in Literary Technology)
Complete Works (Internet Shakespeare Editions -- also includes many facsimiles of early folios and editions - Supported by University of Victoria, Canada)
Complete Works (Created by Jeremy Hylton, Operated by The Tech, Newspaper of the Michigan Institute of Technology)
Complete Works (James Matthew Farrow - The University of Sydney, Australia)
Complete Works (Gutenberg)
Complete Works (Pasadena Shakespeare Company)
Complete Works (Great Books Index)
Complete Works (Internet Public Library - University of Michigan)
The Works (Globe Edition - Electronic Text Center - University of Virginia)
The First Folio and Early Quartos of William Shakespeare (Electronic Text Center - University of Virginia)
The Complete Works (1914 Oxford Edition, Edited by W.J. Craig - Bartleby)
The Sonnets Read by Sir John Gielgud; Much Ado About Nothing 1963 Performance Rex Harrison and Rachel Roberts; and Julius Caesar starring Sir Ralph Richardson and Anthony Quayle and directed by Howard Sackler. [all three links go to the same place, but I thought this presentation easier to follow] (.au, .gsm, and .ra formats - Harper Audio Archives)
Various Works (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Books, Search results for Shakespeare, Read by a variety of readers)
— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822): The great modern example of prosodic inspiration, as Keats, Tennyson, and Mr. Swinburne are of prosodic study. Shelley's early verse is as unimportant in this way as in others; but from Queen Mab to some extent, from Alastor unquestionably, onwards, he displayed totally different quality, and every metre that he touched (even if possibly suggested to some extent by others) bears the marks of his own personality.
The Complete Poetical Works (Houghton Mifflin, New York, 1901; Bartleby.com, New York, 1999 - Bartleby )
The Devil's Walk: A Hypertext Edition (Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat - University of Maryland)
On the Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci: A Hypertext Edition (Neil Fraistat and Melissa Jo Sites - University of Maryland)
Concordance and Texts of: Hymn to Intellectual Beauty (1816); Ozymandias (1817); To A Skylark (1820); Ode to the West Wind (1820); and Adonais: an Elegy on the Death of John Keats (1821) (University of Dundee)
Selected Poems (University of Toronto)
The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Edward Moxon, London, 1839 - Google Books)
The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Edited by Mrs. Shelley, A New Edition (Edward Moxon, Son & Co., London, 1874 - Google Books)
Ode to a Skylark (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Kara Shallenberg)
On Love (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Ethan Gordon)
Ozymandias of Egypt (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Kara Shallenberg)
Ozymandias of Egypt (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by multiple readers in individual versions: Alan Davis-Drake, Annie Coleman, David Barnes, Graham Williams, JemmaBlythe, Kelly Bescherer, Kristin Hughes, Kirsten Tomlinson, Karen Savage, Lenny Glionna Jr, Martin Clifton, Michael Sirois, Robert de Brose, Sean McKinley, Ted Delorme, and Zachary Brewster-Geisz)
— Shenstone, William (1714-1763): Not quite unimportant as poet, in breaking away from the couplet; but of much more weight for the few prosodic remarks in his Essays, in which he directly pleads for trisyllabic (as he awkwardly calls them "dactylic.") feet, for long-echoing rhymes, and for other things adverse to the "mechanic tune by heart" of the popular prosody.
Songs and Ballads (Literary Heritage West Midlands, UK)
Odes (Literary Heritage West Midlands, UK)
Levities; or, pieces of humour (Literary Heritage West Midlands, UK)
Elegies (Literary Heritage West Midlands, UK)
Inscriptions (Literary Heritage West Midlands, UK)
Moral Pieces (Literary Heritage West Midlands, UK)
A Pastoral Ballad, Absence and The School-mistress (excerpt) (University of Toronto)
The Poetical Works in 2 Volumes, Volume II (T. Cadell, Junior and W. Davies, London, 1798 - Google Books)
The Poetical Works With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes; The Text Edited by Charles Cowden Clarke (William P. Nimmo, Edinburgh, 1868 - Google Books)
— Sidney, Sir Philip (1554-1586): A great experimenter in Elizabethan classical forms; but much more happy as an accomplished and very influential master of the sonnet, and a lyric poet of great sweetness and variety.
Defense of Poesie, and Poems (Gutenberg)
Astrophel and Stella (html) also in pdf (text from The Complete Poems of Sir Philip Sydney, 1877 (Alexander B. Grossart); Risa Bear, Renascence Editions - University of Oregon)
The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia (html) also in pdf (William Ponsombe, London, 1590; Risa Bear, Renascence Editions - University of Oregon)
The Lady of May (html with frames); also html without frames; and also in pdf (Risa Bear, Renascence Editions - University of Oregon)
The Psalms of David (html) also in pdf (Risa Bear, Renascence Editions - University of Oregon)
The Poems and The Lay of May(The Poems must be specially requested. Texts are available in ASCII Text, DOS ASCII Text, HTML Encoded Text, SGML Encoded Text, and XML Encoded Text - Oxford Text Archive — Can't link to individual texts, but the collection is easily navigated)
Selections (in The Harvard Classics, 1909-14 and The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1919 - Bartleby)
Selections (University of Toronto)
The Complete Poems of Sir Philip Sidney, Edited with Memorial, Introduction, and Notes by the Rev. Alexander B. Grossart, in Three Volumes, Volume I (Chatto and Windus, London, 1877- Google Books)
The Complete Poems of Sir Philip Sidney, For the first time collected and collated with the original and early editions and mss. and in the quarto form, a hitherto unengraved portrait (formerly in possession of Fulke Greville, Lord of Brooke) and other illustrations. Edited with Essay on the Life and Writings, and Notes, and Illustrations by the Rev. Alexander B. Grossart, in Two Volumes, Volume II(Printed for Private Circulation, 1873- Google Books)
Sir P. S. His Astrophel and Stella, Wherein the excellence of sweete Poesie is concluded (Thomas Newman, London, 1591- Google Books)
— Southey, Robert (1774-1843): A very deft and learned practitioner of many kinds of verse, his tendency to experiment leading him into rhymelessness (Thalaba) and hexameters (The Vision of Judgment) but quite sound on general principles, and the first of his school and time to champion the use of trisyllabic feet in principle, and to appeal to old practice in their favour.
Chronicle of the Cid (Translation of El Cid, Gutenberg)
Poems (Gutenberg)
Poems 1799 (Gutenberg)
Madoc (Longman Rees and Orme, London, 1812 Third Edition - Oliver's Bookshelf)
Selections: The Battle of Blenheim; God's Judgment on a Wicked Bishop; My Days among the Dead are Past; The Old Man's Complaints. And how he gained them; and The Well of St. Keyne (University of Toronto)
Selections at Librivox (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Books)
The Poetical Works of Robert Southey, Collected by Himself, in Ten Volumes, Vol. X (Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans, London, 1838- Google Books)
The Minor Poems of Robert Southey, Esq., Poet Laureate and Member of the Royal Spanish Academy; in Three Volumes, Minor Poems: Vol I (Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans, London, 1823- Google Books)
The Poetical Works of Robert Southey, Complete in One Volume, New Edition (Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans, London, 1845 - Google Books)
— Spenser, Edmund (1552?-1599): The second founder of English prosody in his whole work; the restorer of regular form not destitute of music; the preserver of equivalence in octosyllabic couplet; and the inventor of the great Spenserian stanza, the greatest in every sense of all assemblages of lines, possessing individual beauty and capable of infinite repetition.
History, Volume I, Book IV, Chapter V, p. 350 — html/flashpaper pdf
Amoretti and Epithalamion (html) also in pdf (Prepared from Alexander Grosart's The Complete Works in Prose and Verse of Edmund Spenser (1882); Risa Bear, Renascence Editions - University of Oregon)
Astrophel, A Pastorall Elegie upon the death of the most Noble and valorous Knight, Sir Philip Sidney also in pdf (Found in The Complete Works in Verse and Prose of Edmund Spenser (Grosart, London, 1882: "from the volume of 1596"); Risa Bear, Renascence Editions - University of Oregon)
Colin Clouts Come Home Againe also in pdf (Found in The Complete Works in Verse and Prose of Edmund Spenser (Grosart, London, 1882: "from the volume of 1596"); Risa Bear, Renascence Editions - University of Oregon)
Complaints also in pdf (Transcribed from Alexander B. Grosart's The Complete Works in Verse and Prose of Edmund Spenser (1882) and from Ernest de Sélincourt's Spenser's Minor Poems (Oxford, 1910); Risa Bear, Renascence Editions - University of Oregon)
Daphnaïda, an Elegie upon the Death of the Noble and Virtuous Douglas Howard, daughter and heire of Henry Lord Howard, Viscount Byndon, and wife of Arthur Gorges Esquier. also in pdf (Transcription based upon that of 1596 found in The Complete Works in Verse and Prose of Edmund Spenser (Grosart, London, 1882); Risa Bear, Renascence Editions - University of Oregon)
The Faerie Queene also in pdf (Prepared from The Complete Works in Verse and Prose of Edmund Spenser (Grosart, London, 1882); Risa Bear, Renascence Editions; A version of Book III, updated and glossed by Jean Arrington at Peace College, Raleigh, N.C. in 2005, has been inserted before Book IV - University of Oregon)
Four Hymnes also in pdf (Prepared from The Complete Works in Verse and Prose of Edmund Spenser (Grosart, London, 1882); Risa Bear, Renascence Editions - University of Oregon)
Prothalamion, Or A Spousal Verse also in pdf (Transcription based on: The complete works in verse and prose of Edmund Spenser. (London and Aylesbury) Printed for Private circulation only (by Hazell, Watson, and Viney, ltd.) 1882-84.; Risa Bear, Renascence Editions - University of Oregon)
The Shepheardes Calender also in pdf (Transcription of the second edition of that originally prepared in ASCII in 1993 by R.S. Bear from the John C. Nimmo facsimile (London, 1895) of the British Museum copy of the first edition of 1579. A number of errors were found in the first edition and have been corrected; it is to be hoped that new errors were not introduced. Long's has been modernized, "vv" has been replaced by "w", and catchwords have been omitted. Sixteenth century usage of "i" for "j" and of "u" and "v" has been retained, along with the original spelling. Text found in the original in Greek has been transliterated within brackets. A few printer's errors have been emended, also within brackets. The poems, which were originally in black letter, have been romanized. "E. K.'s notes in the original and in most editions are arranged in hanging indent paragraphs; these have been reformatted and hyper linked to the poems. The 12 woodcuts are included as inline GIF images; Risa Bear, Renascence Editions - University of Oregon)
Sonnets by Spenser from Various Sources also in pdf (Transcribed from: The complete works in verse and prose of Edmund Spenser, London, Grosart, 1882; Risa Bear, Renascence Editions - University of Oregon)
Amoretti and Epithalamion; The Fairie Queen; The Shepheardes Calendar, The Ruins of Time, The Tears of the Muses (In ASCII Text, DOS ASCII Text, HTML Encoded Text, SGML Encoded Text, and XML Encoded Text - Oxford Text Archive — Can't link to individual texts, but the collection is easily navigated)
The Faerie Queene: The Classic Text: Traditions and Interpretations (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee)
Selected Poems (University of Toronto)
Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser in Five Volumes, Vol. V (William Pickering, London, 1825 - Google Books)
Complete Poetical Works, Edited by R.E. Neil Dodge (The Cambridge Poets, Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1908 - Google Books)
— Surrey, Henry Howard, Earl of (1517-1547): Our second English sonneteer, our second author of reformed literary lyric after the fifteenth-century break-down, and our first clearly intentional writer of blank verse.
History, Volume I, Book IV, Chapter I, p.308 — html/flashpaper pdf
[largely intertwined with Wyatt]
Selections: The Ages of Man; Alas! so all Things now do Hold their Peace; Certain Books of Virgil's Aeneis: Book II (excerpt); The Frailty and Hurtfulness of Beauty; From Tuscan Came my Lady's Worthy Race; The Golden Gift that Nature did thee Give; Lady Surrey's Lament for her Absent Lord; London, hast thou Accused me; Love that doth Reign and Live within my Thought; Of the Death of Sir T. W. The Elder; A Praise of His Love; So Cruel Prison; The Soote Season, that Bud and Bloom forth Brings; and The Things That Cause a Quiet Life (University of Toronto)
Poems of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, From Tottel's Miscellany, R.G. Siemens, Editor : The soote season; When youth had led me; Wyatt resteth here; Loue, that with, and reigneth in my thought; The fansy, which that I haue serued long; When ragyng loue with extreme payne; Geue place ye louers; Svche waiward waies hath loue; From Tuskane came my Ladies worthy race; Thassirian king in peace (Malaspina University College, BC, Canada)
Selections (The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1919 and The Harvard Classics, 1909-14 - Bartleby)
Poetical Works of William Shakespeare and the Earl of Surrey, With Memoir and Critical Dissertation by the Rev. George Gilfillan, the Text Edited by Charles Cowden Clarke (James Nichol, Edinburgh; James Nisbet, London; G. Philip & Son, Liverpool; 1862 - Google Books)
The Poems of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (The Aldine Edition of the British Poets, Bell and Daldy, London, 1866 - Google Books)
— Swinburne, Algernon Charles (1837-1909): Of all English poets the one who has applied the widest scholarship and study, assisted by great original prosodic gift, to the varying and accomplishing of English metre. Impeccable in all kinds; in lyric nearly supreme. To some extent early, and, still more, later, experimented in very long lines, never unharmonious, but sometimes rather compounds than genuine integers. Achieved many triumphs with special metres, especially by the shortening of the last line of the Praed stanza into the form of "Dolores," which greatly raises its passion and power.
Atalanta in Calydon (1865) (The Swinburne Project, John A. Walsh, Editor - University of Indiana)
Erechtheus (1876) (The Swinburne Project, John A. Walsh, Editor - University of Indiana)
Poems and Ballads, First Series (1866) (The Swinburne Project, John A. Walsh, Editor - University of Indiana)
Poems and Ballads, Second Series (1878) (The Swinburne Project, John A. Walsh, Editor - University of Indiana)
Songs Before Sunrise (1871) (The Swinburne Project, John A. Walsh, Editor - University of Indiana)
Songs of the Springtides (1880) (The Swinburne Project, John A. Walsh, Editor - University of Indiana)
Studies in Song (1880) (The Swinburne Project, John A. Walsh, Editor - University of Indiana)
Studies in Song (1880) (The Swinburne Project, John A. Walsh, Editor - University of Indiana)
A Tale of Balen (1896) (The Swinburne Project, John A. Walsh, Editor - University of Indiana)
A Tristram of Lyonesse (1882) (The Swinburne Project, John A. Walsh, Editor - University of Indiana)
A Large Selection of Texts (Gutenberg)
Poems and Ballads, 1866 (University of Virginia)
36 Selected Poems (University of Toronto)
28 Selected Poems (The Harvard Classics, 1909-14; The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1919; The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse, (1917); A Victorian Anthology, 1837-1895 (1895) - Bartleby)
Atalanta in Calydon: A Tragedy (Ticknor and Fields, Boston, 1866 - Google Books)
Mary Stuart: A Tragedy (Chatto & Windus, London, 1881 - Google Books)
Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards: A Tragedy (Dodd, Mead, & Company, New York, 1899 - Google Books)
The Queen-Mother; and Rosamund (Chatto & Windus, London, 1905 - Google Books)
Under the Microscope [Though this is a critical work by Swinburne (i.e. not poetry), I'm including it here because of it's influence and neglect] (Thomas B. Mosher, Portland, Maine, 1899 - Google Books)
A Forsaken Garden (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Kristin Hughes)
The Garden of Proserpine (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Larisa Migachyov)
Hertha (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Kristin Hughes)
A Match (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, 9 different recordings, Read by Ada Kerman, Ancilla, Claire Goget, Caitlin Hier, Beth Peat, Giles Baker, Kristin Hughes, Lucy Burgoyne, and Sean McKinley)
— Tennyson, Alfred (1809-1892): A poet who very nearly, if not quite, deserves the position accorded here to Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton. Coming sufficiently late after the great Romantic poets of the earlier school to generalize their results, he started with an apparent freedom (perfectly orderly, in fact) which puzzled even Coleridge. Very soon, too, he produced a practically new form of blank verse, in which the qualities of the Miltonic and Shakespearean kinds were blended, and a fresh metrical touch given. All poets since — sometimes while denying or belittling him — have felt his prosodic influence; and it is still, even after Mr. Swinburne's fifty years of extended practice of it, the pattern of modern English prosody.
Collected Poems (Alfred Lord Tennyson's Poetry)
Multiple Texts (Gutenberg)
79 Selected Poems (University of Toronto)
Selected Poems (Wikisource)
Selected Poems (The Tennyson Page - San Francisco State University)
Poetical Works of Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate, Numerous Illustrations (Harper and Brothers, Publishers, New York, 1872 - Google Books)
The Complete Works of Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate, Illustrated Edition (R. Worthington, New York, 1880 - Google Books)
Large Selection at Librivox (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Books)
— Thomson, James (1700-1748): The first really important practitioner of blank verse after Milton, and a real, though rather mannerized master of it. Displayed an equally real, and more surprising, though much more unequal, command of the Spenserian in The Castle of Indolence.
Winter, A Poem (Rutgers University, Newark)
Selections: The Castle of Indolence: Canto I (excerpt); Hymn on Solitude; A Poem Sacred to the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton; Rule Britannia; The Seasons: Summer (excerpt); and The Seasons: Winter (excerpt) (University of Toronto)
The Poetical Works of James Thomson, With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes by the Rev. George Gilfillan (D. Appleton & Co., New York; James Nichol, Edinburgh; 1854)
— Tusser, Thomas (1524?-1580): A very minor poet — in fact, little more than a doggerelist; but important because, at the very time when men like Gascoigne were doubting whether English had any foot but the iambic, he produced lolloping but perfectly metrical continuous anapaests, and mixed measures of various kinds.
History, Volume I, Book IV, Chapter III, p.326 — html/flashpaper pdf
A hundreth good pointes of husbandrie (1557) (html) and pdf (transcribed by Risa Bear, May 2003, from the Dobell edition of 1909 - Renascence Editions, University of Oregon)
Selected Poems: From An Hundredth Good Points of Husbandry (1557): March, September, The End of Harvest, Good Cheer; From Five Hundredth Points of Good Hustandry (1573 and 1580): Upon the Author's First Seven Years' Service and A Description of the Properties of the Winds All the Times of the Year (Project Gutenberg Consortia Center eBooks)
Five Hundredth Points of Good Hustandry, The Edition of 1580 Collated with those of 1573 and 1577. Together with a reprint, from the Unique Copy in the British Museum of "An Hundredth Good Pointes of Husbandrie", 1557; Edited with Introduction and Notes by W. Payne, Esq. and Sidney J. Herritage, Esq. (Published for the English Dialect Society, Trubner & Co., London, 1878
— Waller, Edmund (1606-1687): A good mixed prosodist of the Caroline period, whose chief transitional importance is in connection with the popularizing of the stopped couplet. His actual precedence in this is rather doubtful; but his influence was early acknowledged, and therefore is an indisputable fact. He was also early as a literary user of anapaestic measures, and tried various experiments.
Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham by Denham and Waller (Gutenberg)
Selections: Of the Last Verses in the Book; On a Girdle; The Self Banished; Song: Go Lovely Rose; The Story of Phœbus and Daphne, Applied; and To the King on his Navy (University of Toronto)
On a Girdle; Go, lovely Rose; and Old Age (Oxford Book of English Verse, 1919 - Bartleby)
On a Girdle; and Go, lovely Rose (The Harvard Classics, 1909-14 - Bartleby)
The Works of Edmund Waller in Verse and Prose (W. and W. Smith and T. Ewing, Dublin, 1768 - Google Books)
The Poetical Works of Edmund Waller, Edited with Annotations by Robert Bell (John W. Parker and Son, London, 1854 - Google Books)
— Watts, Issac (1674-1741): By no means unnoteworthy as a prosodist. Followed Milton in blank verse, early popularized triple-time measures by his religious pieces, evidently felt the monotony of the couplet, and even attempted English Sapphics.
Three Works: Divine Songs; Hymns and Spiritual Songs; and The Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament and Applied to the Christian State and Worship (Gutenberg)
Selected Hymns with in-line recordings (CyberHymnal.org)
The Psalms and Hymns of Isaac Watts (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)
Divine and Moral Songs (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)
Selected Poems: Against Evil Company; Against Idleness and Mischief; and Man Frail and God Eternal (Our God, our help in ages past) (University of Toronto)
The Day of Judgement and A Cradle Hymn (Oxford Book of English Verse, 1919 - Bartleby)
True Greatness; Psalm LXXII and Psalm XC (The Harvard Classics, 1909-14 - Bartleby)
The Incomprehensible (The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse, 1917 - Bartleby)
Horæ Lyricæ and Divine Songs by Isaac Watts, with a Memoir by Robert Southey (Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1854 - Google Books)
— Whitman, Walt[er] (1819-1892): An American poet who has pushed farther than any one before him, and with more success than any one after him, the substitution, for regular metre, of irregular rhythmed prose, arranged in versicles something like those of thc English Bible, but with a much wider range of length and rhythm, the latter going from sheer prose cadence into definite verse.
The Walt Whitman Archive [complete texts of various editions of Leaves of Grass; various manuscripts; MP3 recording of America, and much more]
The Walt Whitman Collection [complete texts of various editions of Leaves of Grass and much more] (electronic text center - University of Virginia)
Leaves of Grass and Prose Works (Bartleby)
Various Texts (Gutenberg)
Selections from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, Read by Richard Sater (Wired for Books - Ohio University)
Selections (University of Toronto)
Poems of Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass), with Biographical Introduction by John Burroughs (Thomas Y. Crowell & Company, New York, 1902)
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, Introduction by Carl Sandburg (The Modern Library, New York, 1921)
Reading of Leaves of Grass (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book (Gutenberg Text), Read by Gord Mackenzie, Hugh McGuire, Kara Shallenberg, cdm2003, Eric Armstrong, Brett, wedschild, Annie Coleman, Chip, Denny Sayers, Tom Yates, and Chris Goringe [in order of first appearance])
The Artilleryman (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Jon Ingram)
A Noiseless Patient Spider (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Books, 8 Different Readings, by Annie Coleman, Betsie Bush, Gord MacKenzie, Kara Shallenberg, Osmia, Peter Yearsley, Squiddhartha, and wedschild)
A Noiseless Patient Spider and When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Books, Read by Peter Bobbe
O Captain! My Captain! (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Books, 13 Different Readings (Bartleby text), by Annie Coleman, Chip, Fox in the Stars, Ted McElroy, Martin Clifton, Marian Brown, Marlo Dianne, Mark Griggs, Robert Garrison, Mark Bradford, Stefan Schmelz, Scott Steven, and Tracy Hall)
O Captain! My Captain! and On the Song of Myself (excerpts) (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Kara Shallenberg)
On the Beach at Night (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Beth Peat)
— Wordsworth, William (1770-1850): Less important as a prosodist than as a poet; but prosodically remarkable both for his blank verse, for his sonnets, and for the "Pindaric" of his greatest Ode.
The Complete Poetical Works of William Wordsworth (MacMillan, London, 1888 - Bartleby)
Large Selection of Texts: Lyrical Ballads (1798); Lyrical Ballads (1800); Poems in Two Volumes; and The Poetical Works, in Three Volumes (Gutenberg)
Lyrical Ballads (html) and pdf (Html etext prepared by R.S. Bear from the original edition of Lyrical Ballads, the Bristol imprint of 1798. The corrections indicated on the original errata slip have been made. Footnotes have been converted into hyperlinked endnotes - Renascence Editions, University of Oregon)
Wordsworth's Poetry Arranged by Published Volume(Wordsworth Variorum Archive - California State University, Los Angeles)
Prelude, 1805 and 1850 Editions [best with djvu plugin[ (Global Language Resources)
Prelude, 1805 and 1850 Editions [this is a collections page, not a direct link to the page; best with djvu plugin] (Global Language Resources)
Lyrical Ballads; The Excursion; and The Prelude (1850) [this search page, not a direct link to the page, but the listed texts are available in ASCII Text, ASCII DOS Text, HTML Encoded Text, SGML Encoded Text, and/or XML Encoded Text] (Oxford Text Archive)
58 Selected Poems(University of Toronto)
Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798 [website designed to teach the poem to college undergraduates] (TheTalisman.org)
She Was a Phantom of Delight (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Kristin Hughes)
She Was a Phantom of Delight (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Paul Sze)
Composed Under Westminster Bridge and The Sun Has Long Been Set (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Peter Bobbe and Beth Peat)
Composed Under Westminster Bridge and The Sun Has Long Been Set (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Peter Bobbe and Beth Peat)
Daffodils, Fidelity, Lucy, Rainbow, She Was a Phantom of Delight, and The World Is Too Much With Us (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Kara Shallenberg)
Daffodils (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Aldon Hynes)
From Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by William Dotson)
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud and To a Butterfly (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Susan Barker and Alan Davis-Drake)
I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Books, 9 Different Readings (Bartleby etext), by Annie Coleman, Dilini Jayasinghe, Deborah Stafford, Graham Williams, JemmaBlythe, Jacqueline Pulliam, Kymm Zuckert, Laura Fox, and Martin Clifton)
The Rainbow (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by olli)
Regrets (LibriVox - MP3/ogg vorbis Audio Book, Read by Douglas D. Anderson)
The Excursion. A Poem By William Wordsworth. A New Edition. (Edward Moxon, London, 1853)
The Poems of William Wordsworth, Poet Laureate, Etc. Etc. A New Edition. (Edward Moxon, London, 1849)
The Prelude or Growth of a Poet's Mind. An Autobiographical Poem. by William Wordsworth. (D. Appleton & Company, New York; Geo. S. Appleton, Philadelphia; 1850)
— Wyatt, Sir Thomas (1503?-1542): Our first English sonneteer and our first reformer, into regular literary verse, of lyric after the fifteenth-century disorder. An experimenter with terza, and in other ways prosodically eminent.
History, Volume I, Book IV, Chapter I, p.305 — html/flashpaper pdf
[largely intertwined with Surrey]
All Poems from the Manuscripts, Taken from the edition by A. K. Foxwell, University of London Press, 1913, and with modern versions and notes appended. (Shakespeares-Sonnets.com)
Copious Selection, many with recordings (Luminarium.org)
23 Selections (University of Toronto)
A Supplication and The Lover's Appeal (The Golden Treasury, 1875 - Bartleby)
Forget not yet ; The Appeal; A Revocation; Vixi Puellis Nuper Idoneus...; and To His Lute (The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1919 - Bartleby)
Poetical Works of Sir Thomas Wyatt, With a Memoir (Little, Brown and Company, Boston; Evans and Dickerson, New York; Lippincott, Grambo and Co., Philadelphia; 1854 - Google Books)
_________________________________
µ(For µ see the Wikipedia entry on mu)
Extended Glossary of Prosody (Saintsbury)
Reasoned List of Poets, Linked (Saintsbury)
Saints. Hist. Vol I Title Page
Saints. Hist. Preface 2nd Edition
Saints. Hist. Preface 1st Edition
Saints. Hist. Glossariolum Technicum
Saints. Hist. Vol I, Bk I, Ch I
Saints. Hist. Vol I, Bk I, Ch II
Saints. Hist. Vol I, Bk I, Ch III
Saints. Hist. Vol I, Bk II, Ch I
Saints. Hist. Vol I, Bk II, Ch II
Saints. Hist. Vol I, Bk II, Ch III
Saints. Hist. Vol I, Bk II, Ch IV
Saints. Hist. Vol I, Bk II, Ch V
Saints. Hist. Vol I, Bk III, Ch I
Saints. Hist. Vol I, Bk III, Ch II
Saints. Hist. Vol I, Bk III, Ch III
Saints. Hist. Interchapter III
Saints. Hist. Vol I, Bk IV, Ch I
Saints. Hist. Vol I, Bk IV, Ch II
Saints. Hist. Vol I, Bk IV, Ch III
Saints. Hist. Vol I, Bk IV, Ch IV
Saints. Hist. Vol I, Bk IV, Ch V
Saints. Hist. Vol I, Appendix I
Saints. Hist. Vol I, Appendix II
Saints. Hist. Vol I, Appendix III
Saints. Hist. Vol I, Appendix IV
Saints. Hist. Vol I, Appendix V
Saints. Hist. Vol I, Appendix VI
Saints. Hist. Vol I, Appendix VII
Saints. Hist. Vol I, Appendix VIII