Contents Chapter 1The Old and Medieval Period(1) 1.1An Introduction(1) 1.2Geoffrey Chaucer (2) Excerpts from the General Prologue of The Canterbury Tales 1.3Folk Ballads(7) “The Three Ravens” “Get Up and Bar the Door” Chapter 2The Renaissance Period(12) 2.1An Introduction(12) 2.2Edmund Spenser(14) “Sonnet 75” 2.3Christopher Marlowe (15) “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” 2.4William Shakespeare (17) “Sonnet 18” “Sonnet 73” An Excerpt from The Merchant of Venice 2.5Francis Bacon (27) “Of Studies” from Essays 2.6John Donne (30) “Valediction Forbidding Mourning” “Death Be Not Proud” 2.7George Herbert(33) “Virtue” 2.8Ben Jonson (34) “Song—To Celia” 2.9Robert Herrick (36) “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” 2.10John Milton (37) An Excerpt from Paradise Lost Chapter 3The Neoclassical Period(44) 3.1An Introduction (44) 3.2John Dryden (46) An Excerpt from An Essay of Dramatic Poesy 3.3John Bunyan (49) “The Vanity Fair”: An Excerpt from The Pilgrim’s Progress 3.4Jonathan Swift (53) An Excerpt from Gulliver’s Travels 3.5Alexander Pope (59) “Ode on Solitude” 3.6Daniel Defoe (61) An Excerpt from Robinson Crusoe 3.7Henry Fielding (65) An Excerpt from Tom Jones 3.8Samuel Johnson (70) To the Right Honorable the Earl of Chesterfield 3.9Thomas Gray (73) An Excerpt from “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” 3.10Robert Burns (76) “A Red, Red Rose” 3.11William Blake (78) “The Chimney Sweeper” (from Songs of Innocence) “London” Chapter 4The Romantic Period (81) 4.1An Introduction(81) 4.2William Wordsworth (83) “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” “Composed upon Westminster Bridge” “She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways” 4.3Samuel Taylor Coleridge (87) “Kubla Khan” 4.4George Gordon Byron (89) “Song for the Luddites” “She Walks in Beauty” 4.5Percy Bysshe Shelley (92) “A Song: ‘Men of England’” “Ozymandias” 4.6John Keats (95) “To Autumn” 4.7 Jane Austen (97) An Excerpt from Pride and Prejudice Chapter 5The Victorian Period (103) 5.1An Introduction(103) 5.2Charles Dickens (104) An Excerpt from Great Expectations 5.3Alfred Tennyson(112) “Break, Break, Break” “Crossing the Bar” “The Eagle” 5.4Robert Browning (115) “Meeting at Night” “HomeThoughts, from Abroad” 5.5Elizabeth Barrett Browning (117) “How Do I Love Thee?” 5.6Charlotte Bront(119) An Excerpt from Jane Eyre 5.7Thomas Hardy (127) “The Man He Killed” An Excerpt from Tess of the d’Urbervilles Chapter 6The Modern Period(136) 6.1An Introduction(136) 6.2George Bernard Shaw (140) An Excerpt from Pygmalion 6.3William Butler Yeats (147) “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” “Down by the Salley Gardens” 6.4T. S. Eliot (150) “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” 6.5James Joyce (157) “Araby” from Dubliners 6.6D. H. Lawrence (163) An Excerpt from Sons and Lovers 6.7Dylan Thomas (169) “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” 6.8William Golding (171) An Excerpt from Lord of the Flies 6.9Ted Hughes (175) “Hawk Roosting” 6.10Seamus Heaney (177) “Follower” References(180)