greykit.poetry — #1840s
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1849
[edgar-allan-poe]
A Dream within a Dream
Poe asks whether a life lived as a dream is therefore less real — then stands on a surf-tormented shore, watching the golden sands slip through his fingers, unable to save even one grain from the pitiless wave.
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1849
[edgar-allan-poe]
Annabel Lee
Poe's last poem — a love that began in a kingdom by the sea, that the winged seraphs envied, that no angels in heaven above nor demons under the sea can ever dissever.
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1849
[edgar-allan-poe]
The Bells
Four movements in sound — silver sleigh-bells, golden wedding-bells, brazen alarm-bells, iron tolling-bells — rising from merriment through alarm to the Ghouls' runic rhyme and the moaning and the groaning of the bells.
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1845
[robert-browning]
Home-Thoughts, from Abroad
An exile's longing for an English April — the elm-tree bole in tiny leaf, the chaffinch on the orchard bough, the wise thrush singing each song twice over, the first fine careless rapture.
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1845
[edgar-allan-poe]
The City in the Sea
Death has reared himself a throne in a strange city far down within the dim West, where no heaven-light reaches and no wind disturbs the melancholy waters — until Hell itself shall rise to do that sunken city reverence.
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1845
[edgar-allan-poe]
The Raven
A grieving man is visited at midnight by a raven who answers every question with the one word "Nevermore," driving him to the edge of madness over his lost Lenore.
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1843
[edgar-allan-poe]
Lenore
A mourner refuses to sing a dirge for Lenore — who died so young, doubly dead — and rebukes those who loved her for wealth and hated her for pride; the poem closes with a defiant pæan, sending the angel up to a golden throne beside the King of Heaven.
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1843
[elizabeth-barrett-browning]
The Cry of the Children
A protest poem on child labor in the mines and factories of England — the children weeping in the playtime of the others, dying before their time, their sob cursing deeper in the silence than the strong man in his wrath.
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1842
[alfred-lord-tennyson]
Break, Break, Break
Waves break on cold gray stones — the fisherman's boy shouts, the sailor lad sings, the stately ships go on, but the tender grace of a day that is dead will never come back to me.
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1842
[robert-browning]
My Last Duchess
A Duke of Ferrara shows an envoy a portrait of his late wife, revealing through oblique self-justification that he had her killed for being too easily pleased by anyone — then turns the conversation to the terms of his next marriage.
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1842
[alfred-lord-tennyson]
The Lady of Shalott
Imprisoned in her island tower by a mysterious curse, the Lady of Shalott weaves the world in a mirror until Sir Lancelot's bright passage compels her to look directly at Camelot — and die.
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1842
[robert-browning]
The Pied Piper of Hamelin
A child's story — the Pied Piper clears Hamelin of its rats for a thousand guilders, the Mayor refuses to pay, and the Piper leads all the town's children away through a mountain door that closes behind them forever.
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1842
[alfred-lord-tennyson]
Ulysses
The aged Ulysses speaks from Ithaca, chafing against an idle kingship and rallying his mariners for one last voyage beyond the western stars — to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.