Uniquely comprehensive...highly readable...the definitive collection of classic lyric poetry. From Shakespeare's wise music to Marvell's profundity and wit...from the Romantics' passionate view of man and woman and nature to twentieth-centur poets' confused searching, this outstanding one-volume collection brings us the profound, soul-nourishing experience of great poetry. Brilliantly selected and arranged by renowned literary masters Robert Penn Warren and Albert Erskine, the poems here reflect the genius of six centuries of poets.  It is the finest anthology of lyric poetry ever published. "Truth" by Geoffrey Chaucer "Ophelia's Song" by William Shakespeare "The Canonization" by John Donne "To Heaven" by Ben Jonson "Ode on Solitude" by Alexander Pope "The Tyger" by William Blake "The Solitary Reaper" by William Wordsworth "Ode to a Nightingale" by John Keats "God's Grandeur" by Gerard Manley Hopkins "Sailing to Byzantium" by William Butler Yeats and more than ninety additional classic poems. prehensive...highly readable...the definitive collection of classic lyric poetry. From Shakespeare's wise music to Marvell's profundity and wit...from the Romantics' passionate view of man and woman and nature to twentieth-centur poets' confused searching, this outstanding one-volume collection brings us the profound, soul-nourishing experience of great poetry. Brilliantly selected and arranged by renowned literary masters Robert Penn Warren and Albert Erskine, the poems here reflect the genius of six centuries of poets. It is the finest anthology of lyric poetry ever published. "Truth" by Geoffrey Chaucer "Ophelia's Song" by William Shakespeare "The Canonization" by John Donne "To Heaven" by Ben Jonson "Ode on Solitude" by Alexander Pope "The Tyger" by William Blake "The Solitary Reaper" by William Wordsworth "Ode to a Nightingale" Uniquely comprehensive...highly readable...the definitive collection of classic lyric poetry. From Shakespeare's wise music to Marvell's profundity and wit...from the Romantics' passionate view of man and woman and nature to twentieth-centur poets' confused searching, this outstanding one-volume collection brings us the profound, soul-nourishing experience of great poetry. Brilliantly selected and arranged by renowned literary masters Robert Penn Warren and Albert Erskine, the poems here reflect the genius of six centuries of poets. It is the finest anthology of lyric poetry ever published. "Truth" by Geoffrey Chaucer "Ophelia's Song" by William Shakespeare "The Canonization" by John Donne "To Heaven" by Ben Jonson "Ode on Solitude" by Alexander Pope "The Tyger" by William Blake "The Solitary Reaper" by William Wordsworth "Ode to a Nightingale" by John Keats "God's Grandeur" by Gerard Manley Hopkins "Sailing to Byzantium" by William Butler Yeats and more than ninety additional classic poems. Robert Penn Warren taught English at Yale University and was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and one for poetry, and of the National Book Award for poetry. He was the author, with Cleanth Brooks, of Understanding Fiction , and of the novels All the King’s Men, World Enough and Time, Band of Angels, and Flood , as well as many other works of fiction, poetry, and literary criticism. He died in 1989. Albert Erskine was a vice president and executive editor at Random House in New York. He was also on the staff of The Southern Review and was associated with the Louisiana State University Press. He died in 1993. GEOFFREY CHAUCER/1340?-1400 Merciles Beautè Your yën two wol slee me sodenly, I may the beautè of hem not sustene, So woundeth hit through-out my herte kene. And but your word wol helen hastily My hertes wounde, whyl that hit is grene, Your yën two wol slee me sodenly, I may the beautè of hem not sustene. Upon my trouthe I sey yow feithfully That ye ben of my lyf and deeth the quene; For with my deeth the trouthe shal be sene. Your yën two wol slee me sodenly, I may the beautè of hem not sustene. So woundeth hit through-out my herte kene. JOHN DONNE/1573-1631 The Canonization For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love, Or chide my palsy, or my gout, My five gray hairs, or ruined fortune flout, With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve, Take you a course, get you a place, Observe his honour, or his grace, Or the king's real, or his stampèd face. Contemplate, what you will approve, So you will let me love. Alas, alas, who's injured by my love? What merchant's ships have my sighs drowned? Who says my tears have overflowed his ground? When did my colds a forward spring remove? When did the heats which my veins fill Add one more to the plaguey bill? Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still Litigious men, which quarrels move, Though she and I do love. Call us what you will, we are made such by love; Call her one, me another fly, We are tapers too, and at our own cost die, And we in us find the eagle and the dove. The phoenix riddle h