Poetry Repertoire

(continually being added to)

ANCIENT GREECE & ROME

Archilochus
            Eclipse
Sappho
            Translated by Mary Barnard:
Don’t ask me what to wear
He is more than a hero
I hear that Andromeda
People do gossip
            Translated by William Carlos Williams:
He is more than a hero
Peer of the Gods is that man
Boethius
from The Consolation of Philosophy (Book 2 no. 5)
            translations by:
                                    Chaucer
                                    Henry Vaughan
                                    V.E. Watts

MEDIEVAL

Anonymous
Sumer is icumen in

Japanese tanka, from Hyaku-nin-isshiu.

ELIZABETHAN

Anonymous
            The lowest trees have tops
Ben Jonson
            The Noble Nature
John Lyly
            Daphne (from Midas)
            Pan’s Syrinx
Christopher Marlowe
            The Passionate Shepherd to his Love
William Shakespeare
            Sonnets:
                        No. 18   – Shall I compare thee?
                        No. 33   – Full many a glorious morning
                        No. 34   – Why didst thou promise?
                        No. 59   – If there be nothing new
                        No. 116 – Let me not to the marriage
            Where the bee sucks

17th CENTURY

Richard Lovelace
The Grasshopper
            To Althea, from Prison
To Lucasta, Going Beyond the Seas
  To Lucasta, Going to the Wars

18th / 19th CENTURIES

William Blake
            To see a world
Thomas Edward Brown
            A garden is a lovesome thing
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
            A Musical Instrument
            Sonnets from the Portuguese:
No. 8 – What can I give thee back?
No. 10 – Yet, love, mere love
No. 43 – How do I love thee?
No. 44 – Beloved, thou has brought me

18th / 19th CENTURIES (cont.)

Lewis Carroll
            Jabberwocky
            The Walrus and the Carpenter
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
            Kubla Khan
Emily Dickinson
There came a Day – at Summer’s Full
Felicia Dorothea Hemans
            Casabianca
James Leigh Hunt
            Abou Ben Adhem
John Keats
            Bright Star
            La Belle Dame Sans Merci
            To Autumn
Edward Lear
            The Jumblies
            The Owl and the Pussycat
Clement C. Moore
            The Night Before Christmas
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
            The Charge of the Light Brigade
            The Lady of Shalott
William Wordsworth
            Daffodils
            Ode on Intimations of Immortality (extract)
            Upon Westminster Bridge

19th / 20th CENTURIES

W.H. Auden
            Night Mail
Mary Barnard
            Static
Nancy Maude Campbell
            The Apple-Tree
Marie Nettleton Carrol
            Garden Magic
E.E. Cummings
            Who knows if the moon’s a balloon?
W.H. Davies
            Leisure
Howard Dolf
            The Gardner’s Morning
John Drinkwater
            Deer
            Holiness
            Moonlit Apples
            Sunrise on Rydal Water
T.S. Eliot
            Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats
Growltiger’s Last Stand
Gus, the Theatre Cat Macavity: The Mystery Cat
Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer
Old Deuteronomy
Skimbleshanks: The Railway Cat
The Naming of Cats
The Old Gumbie Cat
The Rum Tum Tugger
The Song of the Jellicles
Mildred L Elliott
            Dew-Drops
Alma B. Eymann
            Weeder’s Thoughts

19th / 20th CENTURIES (cont.)

Robert Frost
Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening
            The Road Not Taken
            The Tuft of Flowers
Rumer Godden
The Goat People cycle (9 poems)
Sudie Stuart Hagar
He Knows No Winter
Thomas Hardy
An August Midnight
The Oxen
T.E. Hulme
            Above the dock
Autumn
Christopher Isherwood
            The Common Cormorant
Rudyard Kipling
A Smuggler’s Song
            The Glory of the Garden
            The Way Through the Woods
D.H. Lawrence
Kangaroo
  Snake

Walter de la Mare
            Silver
            The Listeners
John Masefield
            Sea-Fever
Edna St Vincent Millay
  Afternoon on a Hill
Alfred Noyes
  The Highwayman
Ezra Pound
            From Cathay (re-imaginings of poems by the 8th century Chinese poet Li Bai, aka Rihaku)
  Lament of the Frontier Guard
  Poem by the Bridge at Ten-Shin
The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter
  The River Song
Charles Spear
            Homecoming
            Portrait
James Still
            Apple Poems I
John Millington Synge
            Prelude
Edward Thomas
            Adlestrop
J.R.R. Tolkien
            The Adventures of Tom Bombadil
            The Man in the Moon Came Down too Soon
            The Mewlips
William Carlos Williams
            This is Just to Say
W.B. Yeats
            Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
            The Lake Isle of Innisfree
            The Song of Wandering Aengus