greykit.poetry — #narrative
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1898
[oscar-wilde]
The Ballad of Reading Gaol
Wilde's long narrative poem in six cantos about the hanging of a soldier at Reading Gaol — anchored in the refrain that each man kills the thing he loves, by each let this be heard.
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1862
[christina-rossetti]
Goblin Market
Laura succumbs to the goblin merchants' enchanted fruit and wastes away; her sister Lizzie braves the goblins to win the antidote and save her — a narrative poem of temptation, sacrifice, and the redemptive bond between sisters.
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1854
[alfred-lord-tennyson]
The Charge of the Light Brigade
Tennyson's galloping tribute to the doomed cavalry charge at Balaclava — half a league onward into the valley of Death, theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die.
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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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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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1815
[lord-byron]
The Destruction of Sennacherib
In thundering anapests Byron retells the annihilation of the Assyrian host — gleaming one evening at sunset, silent and dead by dawn, melted by the Lord's glance.
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1798
[samuel-taylor-coleridge]
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
A mariner shoots an albatross and is cursed to wander the earth, telling his tale of guilt, penance, and hard-won grace.