Poetry Galore!

 

The books I won from Oxford University Press in a twitter (go follow them!) competition a few weeks ago finally arrived earlier this week. I received five volumes of poetry galore which is rather ironic since poetry is the one type of literature that I have immense trouble with. However, flicking through the collection, I am warming up to it and have read quite a few already.

The prize:

• Poems and Prose – Christina Rossetti
• Selected Poetry – John Keats
• Aurora Leigh – Elizabeth Barrett Browning
• Selected Poetry – William Blake
• Selected Poetry – Samuel Coleridge

I’m very excited about the collection and I’ve always been partial to Christina Rossetti’s work. Here is one of my favourite Rossetti poems:

Song

When I am dead, my dearest,

Sing no sad songs for me;

Plant thou no roses at my head,

Nor shady cypress tree:

 

Be the green grass above me

With showers and dewdrops wet;

And if thou wilt, remember,

And if thou wilt, forget.

 

I shall not see the shadows,

I shall not feel the rain;

I shall not hear the nightingale

Sing on, as if in pain:

And dreaming through the twilight

That doth not rise nor set,

Haply I may remember,

And haply may forget.

It’s quite morose but it’s beautiful.