INTRODUCTION TO POETRY AND POETIC THEORY A BRIEF HISTORY OF BRITISH AND AMERICAN POETRY BRITISH VERSE 1. The Canterbury Tales: General Prologue (1 -18) Geoffrey Chaucer (1343 - 1400) 2. Sonnet 18 William Shakespeare ( 1564 - 1616 ) 3. A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning John Donne (1572 -1631) 4. Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (Extract) Thomas Gray (1716 -1771) 5. The Little Black Boy William Blake (1757 - 1827 ) 6. She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways William Wordsworth (1770 -1850) 7. Ode to the West Wind Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822 ) 8. To Autumn John Keats (1795 -1821) 9. My Last Duchess Robert Browning (1812 - 1889 ) 10. Dover Beach Matthew Arnold (1822 - 1888 ) 11. Break, Break, Break Alfred Tennyson (1809 -1892) 12. The Oxen Thomas Hardy ( 1840 - 1928 ) 13. The Windhover: to Christ our Lord Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 - 1889 ) 14. Sailing to Byzantium William Butler Yeats (1865 - 1939) 15. Piano David Herbert Lawrence (1885 -1930) 16. Broadcast Philip Lnrkin (1922 - 1985 ) 17. Long Distance II Tony Harrison (1937 - ) 18. Here Ronald Stuart Thomas ( 1913 - 2000 ) 19. To Paint a Water Lily Ted Hughes (1930 - 1998 ) 20. On the Move Thom Gunn (1929 -2004) AMERICAN VERSE 1. To Helen Edgar Alan Poe (1809 - 1849 ) 2. A Noiseless Patient Spider Walt Whitman (1819 - J892) 3. Because I Could Not Stop for Death Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886) …… SELECTED COMMENTARIES