A Poet's Choice

Jennings Elizabeth

• Publisher: Carcanet Poetry
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781857542622
• eBook ISBN: 9781847775887
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

In A Poet's Choice Elizabeth Jennings includes the poems which helped shape her taste - poems she read at school, or discovered in book shops and the library, or pored over as an undergraduate - work which first gave her a taste for the art of poetry and taught the formal and thematic skills she has practised for fifty years. Many of the poems chosen will be familiar to poetry lovers: what is exciting is the way she brings them together in a kind of commonplace book, conveying to a new audience the magic that enchanted her. This anthology is a window on the personal culture of one of our best-loved writers.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

PART I

It is an ancient Mariner,

And he stoppeth one of three.

‘By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,

Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?

The Bridegroom’s doors are opened wide

And I am next of kin;

The guests are met, the feast is set: –

May’st hear the merry din.’

But still he holds the Wedding-Guest –

‘There was a ship‚’ quoth he –

‘Nay, it thou’st got a laughsome tale,

Mariner! come with me.’

He holds him with his skinny hand,

Quoth he, ‘there was a Ship’ –

‘Now get thee hence, thou grey-beard loon!

Or my Staff shall make thee skip.’

He holds him with his glittering eye –

The Wedding-Guest stood still,

And listens like a three years’ child:

The Mariner hath his will.

The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone:

He cannot choose but hear;

And thus spake on that ancient man,

The bright-eyed Mariner.

‘The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared,

Merrily did we drop

Below the kirk, below the hill,

Below the lighthouse top.

The Sun came up upon the left,

Out of the sea came he!

And he shone bright, and on the right

Went down into the sea.

Higher and higher every day,

Till over the mast at noon’ –

The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast,

For he heard the loud bassoon.

The bride hath paced into the hall,

Red as a rose is she;

Nodding their heads before her goes

The merry minstrelsy.

The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast,

Yet he cannot choose but hear;

And thus spake on that ancient man,

The bright-eyed Mariner.

‘Listen, Stranger! Storm and Wind,

A Wind and Tempest strong!

For days and weeks it play’d us freaks –

Like chaff we drove along.

With sloping masts and dipping prow,

As who pursued with yell and blow

Still treads the shadow of his foe,

And forward bends his head,

The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast,

And southward aye we fled.

And now there came both mist and snow,

And it grew wondrous cold:

And ice, mast-high, came floating by

As green as emerald.

And through the drifts the snowy clifts

Did send a dismal sheen:

Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken –

The ice was all between.

The ice was here, the ice was there,

The ice was all around:

It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,

Like noises in a swound!

At length did cross an Albatross,

Thorough the fog it came;

As if it had been a Christian soul,

We hailed it in God’s name.

The mariners gave it biscuit-worms,

And round and round it flew.

The ice did split with a thunder-fit;

The helmsman steered us through!

And a good south wind sprung up behind;

The Albatross did follow,

And every day, for food or play,

Came to the mariner’s hollo!

In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,

It perched for vespers nine;

Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white,

Glimmered the white Moon-shine.’

‘God save thee, ancient Mariner!

From the fiends, that plague thee thus! –

Why look’st thou so?’ – With my cross-bow

I shot the Albatross.

PART II

The Sun came up u...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• GEOFFREY CHAUCER
• SIR THOMAS WYATT
• EDMUND SPENSER
• SIR PHILIP SIDNEY
• WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
• JOHN DONNE
• GEORGE HERBERT
• SIR THOMAS BROWNE
• JOHN MILTON
• RICHARD CRASHAW
• HENRY VAUGHAN
• JOHN DRYDEN
• THOMAS TRAHERNE
• OLIVER GOLDSMITH
• WILLIAM BLAKE
• WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
• SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
• PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
• JOHN KEATS
• ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
• ROBERT BROWNING
• ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH
• MATTHEW ARNOLD
• DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
• CHRISTINA ROSSETTI
• EMILY DICKINSON
• GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS
• G.K. CHESTERTON
• EDWARD THOMAS
• WILFRED OWEN
• INDEX OF AUTHORS
• INDEX OF FIRST LINES
• By Elizabeth Jennings
• Copyright