My Own Land’s Sins: An Anthology of Victorian Poetry

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In My Own Land’s Sins, the chronological order of poems suggests that poetical forms advanced through the efforts of a multitude of authors over long periods of time. The reader can glimpse at the state of English poetry at any given moment during the Victorian age. The poems included form a continuous narrative both about the advancement of English poetry and about the social history of Britain under Victoria.

The selection of the poems was based on three criteria: their modernity; their preoccupation with the social circumstances of the era; and their usefulness in the classroom.

My Own Land’s Sins is slenderer than most anthologies of Victorian poetry because it attempts to show more with less. There is less text, but more poets (90) than in most anthologies. The poems, some of which have never before been anthologised, are more modern, more socially oriented, better suited as instruments in a cultural-studies analysis of the Victorian era, at graduate and undergraduate levels. They are also more varied thematically than ever before, which should allow for a more complete perspective and a more profitable array of interpretations.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword

1837 – The Shafts of Song, John Sterling

The Old Arm-Chair, Eliza Cook

1838 – Jenny Kissed Me, Leigh Hunt

Coronation Ode for Queen Victoria I, James Montgomery

1839 – Song of the Colonists Departing for New Zealand, Thomas Campbell

[I Know Not How It Falls on Me], Emily Brontë

1840 – Songs of Our Land, Frances Browne

The Weaver (Sonnet XIII), Caroline Norton

Fortuna, Thomas Carlyle

1841 – Nearer, My God, to Thee, Sarah Flower Adams

Pippa’s Song (from Pippa Passes), Robert Browning

1842 – Ulysses, Alfred Tennyson

My Last Duchess, Robert Browning

My World, Frederick William Faber

The Best Thing in the World, Elizabeth Barrett Browning

1843 – The Song of the Shirt, Thomas Hood

The Cry of the Children, Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Donne, Hartley Coleridge

1844 – Song, Fanny Kemble

1845 – Meeting at Night, Robert Browning

Parting at Morning, Robert Browning

1846 – [No Coward Soul Is Mine], Emily Brontë

A Reminiscence, Anne Brontë

Autumn, William Barnes

You Smiled, You Spoke and I Believed, Walter Savage Landor

1847 – [Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal, Now the White], Alfred Tennyson

1848 – I Am!, John Clare

Autumn Song, Dante Gabriel Rossetti

1849 – The Hayswater Boat, Matthew Arnold

Dying Speech of an Old Philosopher, Walter Savage Landor

“Blank Misgivings of a Creature Moving about in Worlds Not Realised,”

Arthur Hugh Clough

1850 – The Cry of the Unemployed, Gerald Massey

In Memoriam (XVII) [I Envy Not in Any Moods], Alfred Tennyson

In Memoriam (CVI) [Ring Out Wild Bells], Alfred Tennyson

In the Train, William Allingham

Sonnet XLIII [How Do I Love Thee], Elizabeth Barrett Browning

1851 – To the Queen, Alfred Tennyson

The Three Fishers, Charles Kingsley

1852 – To Marguerite: Continued, Matthew Arnold

[Some Future Day When What Is Now Is Not], Arthur Hugh Clough

1853 – Perché Pensa? Pensando s’Invecchia, Arthur Hugh Clough

Sorrows of Werther, William Makepeace Thackeray

1854 – The Charge of the Light Brigade, Alfred Tennyson

1855 – A Curse for a Nation (Prologue), Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The Cradle Song of the Poor, Adelaide Anne Procter

[Say Not the Struggle Nought Availeth], Arthur Hugh Clough

My Star, Robert Browning

1856 – Riding Together, William Morris

Old Man, James Henry

1857 – The Enchanted Rose, Frederick Locker Lampson

1858 – Rhymes at the Wrong End, William Johnson Cory

The Last Wish, Robert Bulwer-Lytton

In Prison, William Morris

1859 – The War, Alfred Tennyson

Envy, Adelaide Anne Procter

1860 – A Lost Chord, Adelaide Anne Procter

Song, Augusta Webster

1861 – A Birthday, Christina Rossetti

Robin Redbreast, William Allingham

1862 – Modern Love. XXXIV, George Meredith

Winter: My Secret, Christina Rossetti

An Irish Picture, John Stanyan Bigg

Young and Old, Charles Kingsley

1863 – Sudden Light, Dante Gabriel Rossetti

1864 – Prospice, Robert Browning

In the Valley of Cauteretz, Alfred Tennyson

[It Was a Hard Thing to Undo This Knot], Gerard Manley Hopkins

1865 – The Serving Maid, Arthur Munby

Twin-Growth, William Cosmo Monkhouse

1866 – Perhaps, Sydney Dobell

A Leave-Taking, Algernon Charles Swinburne

Peace. A Study, Charles Stuart Calverley

1867 – Dover Beach, Matthew Arnold

West London, Matthew Arnold

A Scherzo (A Shy Person’s Wishes), Dora Greenwell

A Garden by the Sea, William Morris

Farewell, John Boyle O’Reilly

1868 – Great, Wide, Beautiful, Wonderful World, William Brighty Rands

1869 – To My Beloved Vesta, Shirley Brooks

1870 – Nuptial Sleep, Dante Gabriel Rossetti

A Little While, Dante Gabriel Rossetti

1871 – Cor Cordium, Algernon Charles Swinburne

Professor Noctutus, George MacDonald

1872 – The Cloud Confines, Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Changed, Charles Stuart Calverley

Our Photographs, Frederick Locker Lampson

Love Is Enough, William Morris

1873 – Ode (We Are the Music Makers), Arthur O’Shaughnessy

The Missing Bride, Charles Tennyson Turner

1874 – O May I Join the Choir Invisible, George Eliot

Bayonet Song, Sydney Dobell

1875 – Indwelling, Thomas Edward Brown

1876 – Midnight, Sarah Louisa Bevington

The Toys, Coventry Patmore

Letty’s Globe, Charles Tennyson Turner

1877 – The Caged Skylark, Gerard Manley Hopkins

God’s Grandeur, Gerard Manley Hopkins

Past and Present, R. E. Egerton Warburton

Magna Est Veritas, Coventry Patmore

1878 – Love’s Blindness, Alfred Austin

I Bended Unto Me, Thomas Edward Brown

1879 – Binsey Poplars, Gerard Manley Hopkins

1880 – London Snow, Robert Bridges

Double Ballade of Primitive Man, Andrew Lang

1881 – [A Sonnet Is a Moment’s Monument], Dante Gabriel Rossetti

De Profundis, Christina Rossetti

The Aesthete, William S. Gilbert

1882 – Am I to Lose You?, Sarah Louisa Bevington

On the Hurry of This Time, Austin Dobson

1883 – The Roundel, Algernon Charles Swinburne

Lucifer in Starlight, George Meredith

1884 – Ballade of Literary Fame, Andrew Lang

Epitaph (On a Commonplace Person Who Died in Bed), Amy Levy

Clear the Way!, Algernon Charles Swinburne

1885 – Henry Bartle Edward Frere, Alfred Austin

1886 – Mariage de Convenance – After, Rosamund Marriott Watson

1887 – March. An Ode, Algernon Charles Swinburne

A Death Song, William Morris

1888 – Invictus, William Ernest Henley

Neurasthenia, A. Mary F. Robinson

1889 – Symphony in Yellow, Oscar Wilde

A Ballad of Religion and Marriage, Amy Levy

On the Road, Rosamund Marriott Watson

Epilogue, Robert Browning

1890 – The Last of the Light Brigade, Rudyard Kipling

The Widow at Windsor, Rudyard Kipling

The Lake Isle of Innisfree, William Butler Yeats

1891 – Soliloquy of a Maiden Aunt, Dollie Radford

A Sonnet, J. K. Stephen

I Will Make You Brooches, Robert Louis Stevenson

1892 – Babylon the Great, Christina Rossetti

Javanese Dancers, Arthur Symons

When You Are Old, William Butler Yeats

1893 – The Shortest and Sweetest of Songs, George MacDonald

Summer Past, John Gray

1894 – Thirty Bob a Week, John Davidson

Parting (II), Æ (George William Russell)

1895 – The Little Dancers, Laurence Binyon

The Destroyer of a Soul, Lionel Johnson

The Gray Folk, Edith Nesbit

1896 – A Shropshire Lad. I: 1887, A. E. Housman

The Other Side of a Mirror, Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

The Witch, Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

The Lady Poverty, Alice Meynell

Plainte Eternelle, Alfred Douglas

Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetet Incohare Longam,

Ernest Dowson

1897 – Vitai Lampada, Henry Newbolt

Auctioneer’s Song, Ford Madox Ford

1898 – Song of the Slain, Robert Buchanan

Hap, Thomas Hardy

1899 – The White Man’s Burden, Rudyard Kipling

Impression de Nuit. London, Alfred Douglas

Haschisch, Arthur Symons

The Wind on the Hills, Dora Sigerson Shorter

1900 – The Darkling Thrush, Thomas Hardy

By the Babe Unborn, G. K. Chesterton

1901 – A Long Way (A Villanelle), Jane Barlow

Story of Lilavanti, Adela Nicolson

Drummer Hodge, Thomas Hardy

Index of authors

Index of titles