VOLUME A
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
The Middle Ages
BEFORE THE NORMAN CONQUEST
BEOWULF
EARLY IRISH NARRATIVE
The Labour Pains of the Ulaid
The Birth of Cú Chulainn
The Naming of Cú Chulainn
EARLY IRISH VERSE
To Crinog
Pangur the Cat
Writing in the Wood
The Viking Terror
The Old Woman of Beare
Findabair Remembers Fróech
A Grave Marked with Ogam
from The Voyage of M el Dúin
THE DREAM OF THE ROOD
THE WANDERER
WULF AND EADWACER and THE WIFE'S LAMENT
RIDDLES
Three Anglo-Latin Riddles by Aldhelm
Five Old English Riddles
ARTHURIAN ROMANCE
MARIE DE FRANCE
from Lais
Prologue
Lanval
Chevrefoil (The Honeysuckle)
SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT
(Translated by J.R.R. Tolkien)
SIR THOMAS MALORY
from Morte Darthur
from Caxton's Prologue
The Miracle of Galahad
The Poisoned Apple
The Day of Destiny
GEOFFREY CHAUCER
From THE CANTERBURY TALES
The General Prologue (Middle English and modern translation)
The Miller's Tale
The Introduction
The Tale
The Wife of Bath's Prologue
An Interlude
The Wife Continues
Another Interruption
The Wife of Bath's Tale
The Nun's Priest's Tale
The Introduction
The Tale
from The Parson's Tale
The Introduction
from The Tale
[The Remedy for the Sin of Lechery]
Chaucer's Retraction
To His Scribe Adam
Complaint to His Purse
WILLIAM LANGLAND
from Piers Plowman
Prologue
Passus 2
from Passus 6
Passus 8
MEDIEVAL BIBLICAL DRAMA
THE SECOND PLAY OF THE SHEPHERDS
VERNACULAR RELIGION
from The Wycliffite Bible
John 10.11-18
from A Wycliffite Sermon on John 10.11-18
MARGERY KEMPE
from The Book of Margery Kempe
The Preface
[Meeting with Bishop of Lincoln and Archbishop of Canterbury]
[Visit with Julian of Norwich]
MIDDLE ENGLISH LYRICS
The Cuckoo Song ("Sumer is icumen in")
Alisoun ("Bitwene Mersh and Averil")
I Have a Noble Cock
Abuse of Women ("In every place ye may well see")
Adam Lay Ibounden
I Sing of a Maiden
In Praise of Mary ("Edi be thu, Hevene Quene")
Mary Is with Child ("Under a tree")
Jesus, My Sweet Lover ("Jesu Christ, my lemmon swete")
Contempt of the World ("Where beth they biforen us weren?")
WILLIAM DUNBAR
Lament for the Makars
Done Is a Battell
In Secreit Place This Hyndir Nycht
CHRISTINE DE PIZAN
from Book of the City of Ladies
(trans. by Earl Jeffrey Richards)
The Early Modern Period
JOHN SKELTON
Womanhod, Wanton
Lullay
Knolege, Aquayntance
Manerly Margery Mylk and Ale
from Garland of Laurel
To Maystres Jane Blennerhasset
To Maystres Isabell Pennell
To Maystres Margaret Hussey
SIR THOMAS WYATT
The Long Love, That in My Thought Doth Harbor
COMPANION READING
Petrarch: Sonnet 140
Whoso List to Hunt
COMPANION READING
Petrarch: Sonnet 190
My Galley
They Flee from Me
Some Time I Fled the Fire
My Lute, Awake!
Tagus, Farewell
Forget Not Yet
Blame Not My Lute
Lucks, My Fair Falcon, and Your Fellows All
Stand Whoso List
Mine Own John Poyns
HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY
Love That Doth Reign and Live within My Thought
Th'Assyrians' King, in Peace with Foul Desire
Set Me Whereas the Sun Doth Parch the Green
The Soote Season
Alas, So All Things Now Do Hold Their Peace
COMPANION READING
Petrarch: Sonnet 164
So Cruel Prison
London, Hast Thou Accused Me
Wyatt Resteth Here
My Radcliffe, When Thy Reckless Youth Offends
EDMUND SPENSER
from THE FAERIE QUEENE
A Letter of the Authors
The First Booke of the Faerie Queene
from Amoretti
1 ("Happy ye leaves when as those lilly hands")
4 ("New yeare forth looking out of Janus gate")
13 ("In that proud port, which her so goodly graceth")
22 ("This holy season fit to fast and pray")
62 ("The weary yeare his race now having run")
65 ("The doubt which ye misdeeme, fayre love, is vaine")
66 ("To all those happy blessings which ye have")
68 ("Most glorious Lord of lyfe that on this day")
75 ("One day I wrote her name upon the strand")
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY
The Apology for Poetry
Astrophil and Stella
1 ("Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show")
3 ("Let dainty wits cry on the sisters nine")
7 ("When Nature made her chief work, Stella's eyes")
24 ("Rich fool there be whose base and filthy heart")
31 ("With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies")
45 ("Stella oft sees the very face of woe")
52 ("A strife is grown between Virtue and Love")
60 ("When my good Angel guides me to the place")
63 ("O grammar-rules, O now your virtues show")
68 ("Stella, the only planet of my light")
71 ("Who will in fairest book of Nature know")
Second song ("Have I caught my heavenly jewel")
74 ("I never drank of Aganippe well")
89 ("Now that, of absence, the most irksome night")
90 ("Stella, think not that I by verse seek fame")
104 ("Envious wits, what hath been mine offense")
106 ("O absent presence, Stella is not here")
107 ("Stella, since thou so right a princess art")
108 ("When sorrow (using mine own fire's might)")
ISABELLA WHITNEY
The Admonition by the Author
A Careful Complaint by the Unfortunate Author
MARY HERBERT, COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE
Even Now That Care
To Thee Pure Sprite
Psalm 71: In Te Domini Speravi ("On thee my trust is grounded")
COMPANION READING
Miles Coverdale: Psalm 71
Psalm 121: Levavi Oculos ("Unto the hills, I now will bend")
The Doleful Lay of Clorinda
ELIZABETH I
Written with a Diamond on Her Window at Woodstock
Written on a Wall at Woodstock
The Doubt of Future Foes
On Monsieur's Departure
SPEECHES
On Marriage
On Mary, Queen of Scots
On Mary's Execution
To the English Troops at Tilbury, Facing the Spanish Armada
The Golden Speech
AEMILIA LANYER
The Description of Cookham
from Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum
To the Doubtful Reader
To the Virtuous Reader
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
RESPONSE
Sir Walter Raleigh: The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd
The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus
SIR WALTER RALEIGH
Nature That Washed Her Hands in Milk
To the Queen
On the Life of Man
The Author's Epitaph, Made by Himself
As You Came from the Holy Land
from The Discovery of the Large, Rich and Beautiful Empire of Guiana
from Epistle Dedicatory
To the Reader
[The Amazons]
[The Orinoco]
[The King of Aromaia]
[The New World of Guiana]
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
SONNETS
1 ("From fairest creatures we desire increase")
18 ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day")
20 ("A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted")
29 ("When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes")
30 ("When to the sessions of sweet silent thought")
33 ("Full many a glorious morning have I seen")
55 ("Not marble nor the gilded monuments")
60 ("Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore")
71 ("No longer mourn for me when I am dead")
73 ("That time of year thou mayst in me behold")
87 ("Farewell! Thou art too dear for my possessing")
94 ("They that have pow'r to hurt, and will do none")
104 ("To me, fair friend, you never can be old")
116 ("Let me not to the marriage of true minds")
126 ("O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power")
129 ("The expense of spirit in a waste of shame")
130 ("My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun")
138 ("When my love swears that she is made of truth")
144 ("Two loves I have, of comfort and despair")
152 ("In loving thee thou know'st I am forsworn")
The Tempest
PERSPECTIVES
Tracts on Women and Gender
DESIDERIUS ERASMUS
from In Laude and Praise of Matrimony
BARNABE RICHE
from My Lady's Looking Glass
MARGARET TYLER
from Preface to The First Part of the Mirror of Princely Deeds
JOSEPH SWETNAM
from The Arraignment of Lewd, Idle, Froward, and Unconstant Women
RACHEL SPEGHT
from A Muzzle for Melastomus
ESTER SOWERNAM
from Ester Hath Hanged Haman
HIC MULIER AND HAEC-VIR
from Hic Mulier; or, The Man-Woman
from Haec-Vir; or, The Womanish-Man
THOMAS CAMPION
My sweetest Lesbia, let us live and love
There is a garden in her face
Rose-cheeked Laura, come
When thou must home to shades of underground
Never weather-beaten sail more willing bent to shore
BEN JONSON
On Something, That Walks Somewhere
On My First Daughter
To John Donne
On My First Son
Inviting a Friend to Supper
To Penshurst
Song to Celia
Queen and Huntress
To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare, and What He Hath Left Us
JOHN DONNE
The Good Morrow
Song ("Go, and catch a falling star")
The Sun Rising
The Canonization
A Valediction: of Weeping
Love's Alchemy
The Flea
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
The Ecstasy
The Funeral
The Relic
Elegy 19: To His Mistress Going to Bed
from HOLY SONNETS
1 ("As due by many titles I resign")
2 ("Oh my black soul! Now thou art summoned")
3 ("This is my play's last scene, here heavens appoint")
4 ("At the round earth's imagined corners, blow")
5 ("If poisonous minerals, and if that tree")
6 ("Death be not proud, though some have called thee")
10 ("Batter my heart, three-personed God; for, you")
from Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions
["For whom the bell tolls"]
LADY MARY WROTH
from Pamphilia to Amphilanthus
1 ("When night's black mantle could most darkness prove")
5 ("Can pleasing sight misfortune ever bring?")
16 ("Am I thus conquered? Have I lost the powers")
55 ("How like a fire does love increase in me")
68 ("My pain, still smothered in my grièved breast")
from The Countess of Montgomery's Urania
ROBERT HERRICK
from HESPERIDES
The Argument of His Book
To His Book
Corinna's Going A-Maying
To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
His Prayer to Ben Jonson
Upon Julia's Clothes
The Christian Militant
To His Tomb-Maker
Upon Himself Being Buried
GEORGE HERBERT
The Altar
Redemption
Easter
Easter Wings
Man
Jordan (2)
Time
The Collar
The Pulley
The Forerunners
Love (3)
ANDREW MARVELL
The Coronet
Bermudas
To His Coy Mistress
The Definition of Love
An Horatian Ode Upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland
KATHERINE PHILIPS
Friendship in Emblem, or the Seal
Upon the Double Murder of King Charles
On the Third of September, 1651
To the Truly Noble, and Obliging Mrs. Anne Owen
To Mrs. Mary Awbrey at Parting
To My Excellent Lucasia, on Our Friendship
JOHN MILTON
Lycidas
How Soon Hath Time
On the New Forcers of Conscience Under the Long Parliament
To the Lord General Cromwell
On the Late Massacre in Piedmont
When I Consider How My Light Is Spent
Methought I Saw My Late Espoused Saint
from Areopagitica
from PARADISE LOST
Book 1
from Book 2
Book 9
from Book 12
The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century
SAMUEL PEPYS
from The Diary
[First Entries]
[The Coronation of Charles II]
[The Fire of London]
MARGARET CAVENDISH, DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE
from POEMS AND FANCIES
The Poetress's Hasty Resolution
The Poetress's Petition
An Apology for Writing So Much upon This Book
from The Description of a New Blazing World
from To the Reader
[Creating Worlds]
[Empress, Duchess, Duke]
Epilogue
JOHN DRYDEN
Mac Flecknoe
To the Memory of Mr. Oldham
Alexander's Feast
APHRA BEHN
The Disappointment
To Lysander, on Some Verses He Writ
To Lysander at the Music-Meeting
A Letter to Mr. Creech at Oxford
To the Fair Clarinda, Who Made Love to Me, Imagined More than
Woman
JOHN WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER
Against Constancy
The Disabled Debauchee
Song ("Love a woman? You're an ass!")
The Imperfect Enjoyment
Upon Nothing
A Satyr Against Reason and Mankind
WILLIAM WYCHERLEY
The Country Wife
DANIEL DEFOE
from A Journal of the Plague Year
[At the Burial Pit]
[Encounter with a Waterman]
PERSPECTIVES
Reading Papers
NEWS AND COMMENT
from Mercurius Publicus [Anniversary of the Regicide]
from The London Gazette [The Fire of London]
from The Daily Courant No. 1 [Editorial Policy]
Daniel Defoe: from A Review of the State of the British
Nation, Vol. 4, No. 21 [The New Union]
from The Craftsman No. 307 [Vampires in Britain]
PERIODICAL PERSONAE
Richard Steele: from Tatler No. 1 [Introducing Mr. Bickerstaff]
Joseph Addison: from Spectator No. 1 [Introducing Mr. Spectator]
from Female Spectator, Vol. 1, No. 1 [The Author's Intent]
Richard Steele: from Tatler No. 18 [The News Writers in Danger]
Joseph Addison: from Tatler No. 155 [The Political Upholsterer]
Joseph Addison: from Spectator No. 10 [The Spectator and Its Readers]
GETTING, SPENDING, SPECULATING
Joseph Addison: Spectator No. 69 [Royal Exchange]
Richard Steele: Spectator No. 11 [Inkle and Yarico]
Daniel Defoe: from A Review of the State of the British Nation, Vol. 1, No. 43 [Weak Foundations]
Advertisements from the Spectator
WOMEN AND MEN, MANNERS AND MARRIAGE
Richard Steele: from Tatler No. 25 [Duellists]
Daniel Defoe: from A Review of the State of the British Nation, Vol. 9, No. 34 [A Duellist's Conscience]
from The Athenian Mercury
Richard Steele: from Tatler No. 104 [Jenny Distaff Newly Married]
Joseph Addison: Spectator No. 128 [Variety of Temper]
Eliza Haywood: from The Female Spectator, Vol. 1, No. 1 [Seomanthe's Elopement]
Eliza Haywood: from The Female Spectator, Vol. 2, No. 10 [Women's Education]
JONATHAN SWIFT
A Description of the Morning
A Description of a City Shower
Stella's Birthday, 1719
Stella's Birthday, 1727
The Lady's Dressing Room
RESPONSE
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: The Reasons that Induced Dr. S. to write a Poem called The Lady's Dressing Room
from Gulliver's Travels
from Part 3. A Voyage to Laputa
Part 4. A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms
A Modest Proposal
"A MODEST PROPOSAL" AND ITS TIME
William Petty from Political Arithmetic
ALEXANDER POPE
An Essay on Criticism
The Rape of the Lock
from The Iliad
from Preface [On Translation]
from Book 12 [Sarpedon's Speech]
from An Essay on Man
Epistle 1
To the Reader
The Design
Argument
from The Dunciad
from Book the Fourth
[Argument]
[The Goddess Coming in Her Majesty]
[The Geniuses of the Schools]
[Young Gentlemen Returned from Travel]
LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU
from The Turkish Embassy Letters
To Lady-[On the Turkish Baths]
To Lady Mar [On Turkish Dress]
Letter to Lady Bute [On Her Granddaughter]
Epistle from Mrs. Yonge to Her Husband
The Lover: A Ballad
JOHN GAY
The Beggar's Opera
JAMES THOMSON
from The Seasons
from Autumn
Rule, Britannia
THOMAS GRAY
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
SAMUEL JOHNSON
The Vanity of Human Wishes
THE RAMBLER
No. 4 [On Fiction]
No. 5 [On Spring]
THE IDLER
No. 31 [On Idleness]
No. 84 [On Autobiography]
JAMES BOSWELL
from London Journal
[A Scot in London]
[First Meeting with Johnson]
from The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
[Introduction; Boswell's Method]
[Dinner with Wilkes]
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
The Deserted Village
ELIZA HAYWOOD
Fantomina: Or, Love in a Maze
CREDITS
INDEX