greykit.poetry — #1880s

• 1889 [alfred-lord-tennyson] Crossing the Bar
  Demeter and Other Poems

  Tennyson's valedictory lyric — written in a single sitting, placed by his own wish at the close of every volume of his work — hopes for no mourning when the tide bears him out, and to see his Pilot face to face.

  #elegy#death#faith#sea#1880s
• 1889 [rudyard-kipling] The Ballad of East and West
  Barrack-Room Ballads

  A border horse-thief and a colonel’s son meet as enemies and part as blood-brothers.

  #ballad#india#honour#1880s
• 1887 [robert-louis-stevenson] Requiem
  Underwoods

  Stevenson's eight-line epitaph for himself — under the wide and starry sky, glad did I live and gladly die; home is the sailor; home from sea, and the hunter home from the hill.

  #elegy#death#lyric#1880s
• 1885 [robert-louis-stevenson] From a Railway Carriage
  A Child's Garden of Verses

  Faster than fairies, faster than witches — bridges, hedges, painted stations, a child gathering brambles, a tramp, a mill and a river: each a glimpse and gone for ever.

  #children#travel#lyric#1880s
• 1885 [robert-louis-stevenson] The Swing
  A Child's Garden of Verses

  A child swings up in the air so blue — over the wall, over the countryside, down on the garden green — and up in the air and down.

  #children#lyric#joy#1880s
• 1881 [oscar-wilde] Requiescat
  Poems

  Wilde's elegy for his sister Isola, who died aged nine — tread lightly, speak gently; all her bright golden hair tarnished with rust, all his life's buried here.

  #elegy#grief#death#lyric#1880s