Anthologies

British Women Poets of the 19th Century

Edited by Margaret Randolph Higonnet

NY: Penguin/Meridian, 1996

Introduction

Note on the Text

Acknowledgments

ANNA DODSWORTH (c.1740-1801)

To Matthew Dodsworth, Esq., On a Noble Captain's Declaring That His Finger Was Broken by a Gate

Badinage on Recovering from a Bad Fit of Sickness at Bath, July 1794

ANNA LAETITIA BARBAULD (1743-1825)

The Rights of Woman

To a Little Invisible Being Who Is Expected Soon to Become Visible

Washing-Day

To Mr. S. T. Coleridge

The Caterpillar

Eighteen Hundred and Eleven

The First Fire

Fragment

ELIZABETH MOODY (d.1814)

To Dr. Darwin on Reading His Loves of the Plants

The Distempered Muse

To the New Year, 1796, Who Made His First Appearance When the Weather Was Uncommonly Fine

The Housewife's Prayer, on the Morning Preceding a Fete

Sappho Burns Her Books and Cultivates the Culinary Arts

The Housewife; Or, The Muse Learning to Ride the Great Horse Heroic

CHARLOTTE SMITH (1749-1806)

Sonnet 44, from Elegiac Sonnets, "Written in the Churchyard at Middleton in Sussex"

Thirty-eight, Addressed to Mrs. H-----y

Sonnet 83: The Sea View, from Elegiac Sonnets

Apostrophe to an Old Tree

The Heath

To My Lyre

Beachy Head

ANN YEARSLEY (1752-1806)

To Mira on the Care of Her Infant

Familiar Poem from Nisa to Fulvia of the Vale

FRANCES O'NEILL (fl.1785)

To Mr. Kelly, Who Lives in a Respectable Family in Berkeley Square

JANE WEST (1758-1852)

To a Friend on Her Marriage, 1784

On the Sonnets of Mrs. Charlotte Smith

Ode IV: For the Year 1789, Written on New Year's Day, 1790

To the Hon. Mrs. C-----e

MARY ROBINSON (1758-1800)

London's Summer Morning

A Fragment

January 1795

Sonnet 4, from Sappho and Phaon [Why, when I gaze on Phaon's beauteous eyes]

Modern Female Fashions

Modern Male Fashions

The Poet's Garret

Ode Inscribed to the Infant Son of S. T. Coleridge, Esq.

To the Poet Coleridge

The Fugitive

The Camp

ELIZABETH HANDS (fl. 1789)

On an Unsociable Family

[A Poem] Written, Originally Extempore, on Seeing a Mad Heifer Run Through the Village Where the Author Lives

A Poem, on the Supposition of an Advertisement Appearing in a Morning Paper, of the Publication of a Volume of Poems by a Servant Maid

A Poem, on the Supposition of the Book Having Been Published and Read

The Death of Ammon

HELEN MARIA WILLIAMS (1762-1827)

To Dr. Moore, in Answer to a Poetical Epistle Written by Him in Wales

To the Curlew

JOANNA BAILLIE (1762-1851)

A Winter's Day

A Summer's Day

A Reverie

A Mother to Her Waking Infant

Address to the Muses

London

Verses Written in February 1827

CAROLINA, BARONESS NAIRNE (1766-1845)

The Laird o' Cockpen

CHARLOTTE NOOTH (fl.1800)

Irregular Lines Addressed to the Baronne de Stael-Holstein

Love and Chemistry

A Dish of Tea!

DOROTHY WORDSWORTH (1771-1855)

A Sketch

Grasmere--a Fragment

After-recollection at Sight of the Same Cottage

Floating Island

CHRISTIAN MILNE (b.1773; d. after 1816)

Written at Fourteen Years of Age, On an Elderly Lady Whom I Then Served

Preface

On a Lady Who Spoke with Some Ill-Nature of the Advertisement of My Little Work in the Aberdeen Journal

MARY MATILDA BETHAM (1776-1852)

[Ye men, we willingly yield these to you]

JANE TAYLOR (1783-1824)

Recreation

A Pair

Accomplishment

The Toad's Journal

To Madame de Stael, Written After Reading Corinne, ou l'Italie

LADY CAROLINE LAMB (1785-1828)

A New Canto

[Would I had seen thee dead and cold]

Lines to Harriet Wilson

CAROLINE BOWLES (1786-1854)

The Birthday (excerpts)

FELICIA HEMANS (1793-1835)

Properzia Rossi

Corinne at the Capitol

JANET HAMILTON (1795-1873)

Leddy Mary--A Ballad

A Lay of the Tambour Frame

LETITIA ELIZABETH LANDON (1802-1838)

Revenge

Lines of Life

Stanzas on the Death of Mrs. Hemans

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING (1806-1861)

Felicia Hemans

The Cry of the Chidlren

Grief

To George Sand, A Desire

To George Sand, A Recognition

From Sonnets from the Portuguese

1. [I thought once how Theocritus had sung]

6. [Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand]

10. [Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed]

13. [And wilt thou have me fashion into speech]

22. [When our two souls stand up erect and strong]

43. [How do I love thee? Let me count the ways]

The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point

Aurora Leigh (excerpts)

A Curse for a Nation

A Musical Instrument

FRANCES ANNE KEMBLE (1809-1893)

Sonnet

Fragment

The Black Wallflower

CHARLOTTE BRONTE (1816-1855)

[He is gone and all grandeur has fled from the mountain]

[We wove a web in childhood]

The Teacher's Monologue

Apostasy

[He saw my heart's woe--discovered my soul's anguish]

EMILY JANE BRONTE (1818-1848)

[High waving heather neath stormy blasts bending]

[Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away]

[And now the house-dog stretched once more]

[There was a time when my cheek burned]

The Night Wind

Song: The linnet in the rocky dells

The Philosopher

Remembrance

Stars

The Prisoner: A Fragment

No coward soul is mine

GEORGE ELIOT (1819-1880)

A Minor Prophet

In a London Drawingroom

O May I Join the Choir Invisible

From The Spanish Gypsy

[Should I long that dark were fair?]

[The world is great: the birds all fly from me]

Song of the Zincali

Brother and Sister

Erinna

JEAN INGELOW (1820-1897)

Divided

The High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire, 1571

Work

ANNE BRONTE (1820-1849)

Lines Composed in a Wood on a Windy Day

A Prayer

Last Lines

DORA GREENWELL (1821-1882)

To Elizabeth Barrett Browning in 1851

To Elizabeth Barrett Browning in 1861

Old Letters: II

A Scherzo (A Shy Person's Wishes)

The Sunflower

To Christina Rossetti

Demeter and Cora

The Homeward Lane

Home

CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI (1830-1894)

Song [When I am dead, my dearest]

Song [She sat and sang alway]

[Some ladies dress in muslin full and white]

After Death

On Keats

A Pause

The World

A Soul

Cobwebs

Shut Out

In an Artist's Studio

Winter: My Secret

Uphll

At Home

From House to Home

The Convent Threshold

L.E.L.

Goblin Market

On the Wing

If a mouse could fly

[O Lady Moon, your horns point toward the east]

[Brown and furry]

[If a pig wore a wig]

A Christmas Carol

Passing and Glassing

Sonnet 10, from Monna Innominata

[Time flies, hope flags, life plies a wearied wing]

Sonnet 6, from Later Life, A Double Sonnet of Sonnets

[We lack, yet cannot fix upon the lack]

Advent

[Stroke a flint, and there is nothing to admire]

[Sleeping at last, the trouble and tumult over]

EMILY JANE PFEIFFER (1827-1890)

To a Moth That Drinketh of the Ripe October

The Lost Light

A Chrysalis

Klytemnestra

AUGUSTA WEBSTER (1837-1894)

Circe

A Castaway

Sonnets from Mother and Daughter

5. [Last night the broad blue lightnings flamed the sky]

8. [A little child she half defiant came]

14. [To love her as today is so great bliss]

16. [She will not have it that my day wanes low]

MATHILDE BLIND (1841-1896)

Nuit

Noonday Rest

VIOLET FANE (1843-1905)

Afterwards

A Reverie

MICHAEL FIELD (PSEUD. Of KATHERINE HARRIS BRADLEY, 1846-1914 AND EDITH EMMA COOPER, 1862-1913)

From Long Ago

33. [Maids, not to you my mind doth change]

34. ["Sing to us, Sappho!" cried the crowd]

52. [Climbing the hill a coil of snakes]

63. [Grow vocal to me, O my shell divine]

The Sleeping Venus (Giorgione)

A Portrait (Bartolommeo Veneto)

[It was deep April, and the morn]

[A Girl]

Marionettes

Unbosoming

Your rose is dead

To Christina Rossetti

The Mummy Invokes His Soul

After Soufriere

A Palimpsest

Maidenhair

September

October

Nests in Elms

White Madness

Festa

Covenant

Possession

Falling Leaves

Ascending and Descending

Circe at Circaeum

Second Thoughts

ALICE CHRISTIANA GERTRUDE MEYNELL (1847-1922)

To the Beloved

A Letter from a Girl to Her Own Old Age

The Visiting Sea

Regrets

A Poet of One Mood

Renouncement

A Song of Derivations

Cradle Song at Twilight

Parentage

To the Body

The Launch

TORU DUTT (1856-1877)

Sita

Our Casuarina Tree

JANE BARLOW (1857-1916)

In Higher Latitiudes

Wayfarers

Barred

AGNES MARY FRANCES ROBINSON (1857-1944)

Love Without Wings: Eight Songs

Neurasthenia

Darwinism

Selva Oscura

DOLLIE RADFORD (1858-1920)

To a Stranger

Nobody in Town

A Novice

From the Suburbs

From Our Emancipated Aunt in Town

A Portrait

EDITH NESBIT (1858-1924)

The Depths of the Sea

Bewitched

The Things That Matter

ROSAMUND MARRIOTT WATSON (1860-1911)

Ballad of the Bird-Bride

Ballad of the Willow Pool

MARY ELIZABETH COLERIDGE (1861-1907)

The Other Side of a Mirror

A Clever Woman

Gone

[True to myself am I, and false to all]

The Witch

On a Bas-relief of Pelops and Hippodameia

Unwelcome

The White Women

No Newspapers

CAROLINE FITZ GERALD (fl.1889)

Hymn to Persephone

AMY LEVY (1861-1889)

Xantippe: A Fragment

Felo de Se

London in July

Ballade of an Omnibus

Borderland

To Vernon Lee

A Ballade of Religion and Marriage

MAY KENDALL (1861-1943)

Lay of the Trilobite

A Pure Hypothesis

The Philanthropist and the Jellyfish

Woman's Future

In the Toy Shop

CHARLOTTE MEW (1870-1928)

Afternoon Tea

In Nunhead Cemetary

The Farmer's Bride

The Fete

Fame

The Forest Road

Notes

Index of Titles and First Lines

Index of Authors

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