According to Thomas de Quincey, William Wordsworth (1770-1850) clocked up an estimated 180,000 miles during his lifetime, walking around his beloved Lake District (to say nothing of the Quantocks, where he lived near Coleridge during the 1790s). In this sonnet, ‘Sweet Was the Walk’, Wordsworth recalls a walk he took […]
Tag: Post A Poem A Day
‘Walking’: A Poem by Thomas Traherne
In terms of having the longest wait for a posthumous poetic reputation to begin, the seventeenth-century poet Thomas Traherne (c. 1637-74) may take first prize. Over a century before Romanticism, Traherne describes how walking amongst nature can provide us with an appreciation of the beauty all around us. But Traherne’s […]
‘White in the Moon the Long Road Lies’: A Poem by A. E. Housman
‘White in the Moon the Long Road Lies’: in this poem, the king of lugubrious English verse, A. E. Housman (1859-1936), writes about leaving his beloved, with the road lying ahead of him that ‘leads me from my love’. And although he trusts that the same road will eventually lead […]
‘I Have a Gentle Cock’: An Anonymous Medieval Poem
‘I Have a Gentle Cock’ dates from the Middle Ages – probably the fourteenth century – as the Middle English spelling (reproduced in the original below) suggests. And yes, there is a bawdy double entendre going on in the title of this short medieval lyric: ‘cock’ is not just a […]
‘To the Memory of Mrs Lefroy who Died Dec:r 16 – My Birthday’: A Poem by Jane Austen
Jane Austen is, of course, best-known for her six full-length novels rather than for her poems, but she did also write poetry – such as this fine verse. ‘To the Memory of Mrs Lefroy who Died Dec:r 16 – My Birthday’ was written to commemorate her friend, Anne Lefroy, who […]