Sonnets from the Portuguese (43)
Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 43 explores the depth and endurance of love that transcends both time and death.
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Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey
Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” transforms remembered nature into moral vision — attention ripened by time becomes wisdom.
The Solitary Reaper
A singer in a field teaches Wordsworth an ethics of listening — mystery honored, music carried inward as lasting solace.
The World Is Too Much With Us
A bracing sonnet against distraction and commerce — Wordsworth pleads for a restored capacity to see the world as sacred.
London, 1802
An urgent apostrophe to Milton — Wordsworth critiques national selfishness and calls for humble, star-like virtue.
The Eve of St. Agnes (Selected Excerpts)
A winter romance in Spenserian stanzas, “The Eve of St. Agnes” stages desire at the threshold of ritual and risk.
Ode to a Nightingale
Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” captures the longing to escape mortality through the immortal voice of song.
Ode on a Grecian Urn
Keats’s urn contrasts life’s change with art’s permanence — desire held forever just before fulfillment.
La Belle Dame sans Merci
A modern ballad of enthrallment and warning, “La Belle Dame sans Merci” leaves desire stranded where no birds sing.
Bright Star
Keats reimagines constancy as intimacy — a star’s steadiness translated into breath and touch.
To Autumn
“To Autumn” praises ripeness and labor, accepting time’s change with a serenity tuned to soft-dying light.
Mont Blanc (Selected Excerpts)
In “Mont Blanc,” Shelley tests the sublime as a pact between mind and mountain — perception making grandeur legible.