Poetry: British Poetry

From The Bloomsbury Dictionary of English Literature
A famous poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson about the episode in the battle of Balaclava (1854) in the Crimean War, between the British and the French on one side and the Russians on the other. The charge was of great heroism, but was an act of folly based on a misunderstood order. MORE

From The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English
A poem by Christina Rossetti, published in 1862. It tells the story of two sisters, Lizzie and Laura, who are tempted by goblins to eat their delicious but dangerous fruit. MORE

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. MORE

From The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English
A Dramatic Monologue by Algernon Charles Swinburne, published in Poems And Ballads (1866). Addressed to Proserpine, Queen of the Underworld, by a pagan Roman (possibly Julian the Apostate) of the 4th century of the Christian era, it sets forth the Heraclitan doctrine of flux and change. MORE

From The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English
A poem by Alfred Tennyson, consisting of 132 connected lyrics, published in 1850. MORE

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
He did not wear his scarlet coat,
 For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
 When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
 And murdered in her bed. MORE

From Brewer's Dictionary of Irish Phrase and Fable
One of the smallest islands in Lough Gill, County Sligo. It is known around the world from one of W.B. YEATS's most popular poems, ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’, from his collection The Rose (1893): "I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, / And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles mad. MORE

From The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English
A poem by Robert Browning, published in four monthly instalments between November 1868 and February 1869. Divided into 12 books and running to 21,000 lines of blank verse, it is his most ambitious and complex work. MORE

Poet, broadcaster, and writer on architecture, born in London, UK. He studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, but left university without a degree. He began to write for the Architectural Review and became general editor of the Shell Guides (1934). MORE

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was widely regarded as England's greatest woman poet. Although her poetry has now fallen into disfavour, it shows individuality of style and rich imagination. MORE

English poet. His remarkably broad and sound education was primarily the work of his artistic and scholarly parents—in particular his father, a London bank clerk of independent means. MORE

English novelist and poet, b. near Dorchester, one of the great English writers of the 19th cent. The son of a stonemason, he derived a love of music from his father and a devotion to literature from his mother. MORE

Irish poet, b. Londonderry (now Derry), Northern Ireland. Heaney may be the finest poet writing in English today. In his early works, such as Death of a Naturalist (1966) and Door into the Dark (1969), Heaney is a lyrical nature poet. MORE

Poet, born in Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire, N England, UK. He studied at Cambridge, where he read English for two years, then switched to archaeology and anthropology for his final year. MORE

Northern Irish poet, born in Belfast. He is noted for his low-key, socially committed but politically uncommitted verse. MORE

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
English poet; sister of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Publication of some of her poems in her brother William's magazine the Germ was her only contribution to Pre-Raphaelite activities. She was a devout Anglican and lived the last 15 years of her life as a recluse in her home. MORE

English poet. He was poet laureate 1850-92. His verse has a majestic, musical quality, and few poets have surpassed his precision and delicacy of language. MORE

Welsh poet, b. Swansea. An extraordinarily individualistic writer, Thomas is ranked among the great 20th-century poets. He grew up in Swansea, the son of a teacher, but left school at 17 to become a journalist and moved to London two years later. MORE

Irish writer. With his flamboyant style and quotable conversation, he dazzled London society and, on his lecture tour in 1882, the USA. He published his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, in 1891. MORE

Born in Dublin, he spent two-thirds of his life out of Ireland. His father, John B. Yeats, was a lawyer turned painter, and in 1867 the family followed him to London, moving to the recently developed Bedford Park estate in Chiswick in 1879. MORE