Preface -- The Prologue -- Contemplations -- The Flesh and the Spirit -- The Author to Her Book -- To My Dear and Loving Husband -- In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet, Who Deceased August, 1665, Being a Year and a Half Old -- Some Verses Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666 / Anne Bradstreet -- Prologue (from "Preparatory Meditations) -- Meditation I -- The Reflexion -- Meditation 6 -- Meditation 8 -- Meditation 20 -- Meditation 29 -- Meditation 38 -- Meditation 40 -- Meditation 68A, Second Series -- from "Gods Determinations Touching His Elect -- The Preface -- The Glory of and Grace in the Church Set Out -- The Joy of Church Fellowship Rightly Attended -- Miscellaneous Poems -- An Address to the Soul Occasioned By a Rain -- Upon a Spider Catching a Fly -- Huswifery -- Upon Wedlock and Death of Children -- The Ebb and Flow / Edward Taylor -- The Power of Fancy -- Death (from "The House of Night") -- The Vanity of Existence -- To the Memory of the Brave Americans -- The Hurricane -- The Wild Honey Suckle -- The Indian Burying Ground -- To Sir Toby -- Ode -- Amanda's Complaint -- On a Honey Bee -- On the Universality and Other Attributes of the God of Nature / Philip Freneau -- The Hasty-Pudding -- from "The Columbiad" [One Centred System] / Joel Barlow -- Thanatopsis -- The Yellow Violet -- Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood -- To a Waterfowl -- Green River -- A Winter Piece -- Summer Wind -- A Forest Hymn -- "Oh Fairest of the Rural Maids" -- The Evening Wind -- To Cole, the Painter, Departing for Europe -- To the Fringed Gentian -- The Prairies -- Earth -- The Antiquity of Freedom -- "Oh Mother of a Mighty Race" -- The Poet -- The Death of Lincoln / William Cullen Bryant.

The Sphinx -- Each and All -- The Problem -- Uriel -- Alphonso of Castile -- Mithridates -- Hamatreya -- The Rhodora -- The Snow-Storm -- Ode -- Ode to Beauty -- Give All to Love -- The Apology -- Merlin -- Bacchus -- Blight -- Musketaquid -- Threnody -- Concord Hymn -- Brahma -- Days -- Two Rivers -- Waldeinsamkeit -- Terminus -- Compensation / Ralph Waldo Emerson -- Hymn to the Night -- The Skeleton in Armor -- The Arsenal at Sspringfield -- Seaweed -- The Fire of Driftwood -- In the Churchyard at Cambridge -- The Jewish Cemetery at Newport -- The Ropewalk -- My Lost Youth -- Snow-Flakes -- Killed at the Ford -- Divina Commedia -- The Challenge -- Aftermath -- The Sicilian's Tale -- Chaucer -- Milton -- Keats -- The Sound of the Sea -- The Harvest Moon -- Nature -- The Chamber over the Gate -- The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls -- Jugurtha -- The Cross of Snow / Henry Wadsworth Longfellow -- Memories -- Proem -- Ichabod -- Skipper Ireson's Ride -- The Old Burying-Ground -- Telling the Bees -- My Playmate -- Barbara Frietchie -- Snow-Bound -- Laus Deo! -- Prelude (from"Among the Hills") -- At Last / John Greenleaf Whittier -- Tamerlane -- Evening Star -- A Dream Within a Dream -- Sonnet-To Science -- Al Aaraaf -- Romance -- To Helen -- Israfel -- The City in the Sea -- The Sleeper -- Lenore -- The Valley of Unrest -- The Coliseum -- To One in Paradise -- The Haunted Palace -- Sonnet-Silence -- The Conqueror Worm -- Dream-Land -- The Raven -- Ulalume-A Ballad -- Eldorado -- For Annie -- To My Mother -- Annabel Lee / Edgar Allan Poe -- The Ballad of the Oysterman -- Old Ironsides -- The Last Leaf -- The Chambered Nautilus -- The Living Temple -- The Deacon's Masterpiece -- Contentment -- The Two Streams -- Manhood (from "Wind-Clouds and Star-Drifts") -- Dorothy Q. -- Two Sonnets: Harvard -- The Peau De Chagrin of State Street / Oliver Wendell Holmes.

To the Canary Bird -- Thy Beauty Fades -- The New Birth -- Nature -- Life -- The Garden -- The columbine -- The Dead -- The Slave -- Love -- Thy Brother's Blood -- The Hand and Foot -- Psyche -- The Barberry-Bush -- Man in Harmony with Nature -- On the Completion of the Pacific Telegraph -- The Broken Bowl -- The April Snow -- Soul-Sickness -- The Clouded Morning -- Abdolonymus the Sidonian -- The Fugitive Slaves -- On Visiting the Graves of Hawthorne and Thoreau -- The New Man -- The New World / Jones Very -- Within the Circuit of This Plodding Life -- Great God, I Ask Thee for No Meaner Pelf -- Light-Winged Smoke, Icarian Bird -- Though All the Fates Should Prove Unkind -- Woof of the Sun, Ethereal Gauze -- Lately, Alas, I Knew a Gentle Boy -- The Inward Morning -- My Books I'd Fain Cast Off, I Cannot Read -- I Am A Parcel of Vain Strivings Tied -- Inspiration -- The Fall of the Leaf / Henry David Thoreau -- To the Dandelion -- From "A Fable for Critics" [Emerson] -- [Bryant] -- [Whittier] -- [Hawthorne] -- [Cooper] -- [Poe and Longfellow] -- [Lowell] -- Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration -- Sunthin' in the Pastoral Line -- The Washers of the Shroud -- Auspex -- The Recall -- On Receiving a Copy of Mr. Austin Dobson's "Old World Idylls" -- Verses, Intended to Go With a Posset Dish / James Russell Lowell -- Song of Myself -- From "To Think of Time" -- Crossing Brooklyn Ferry -- Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking -- From "Children of Adam" -- To the Garden the World -- From Pent-up Aching Rivers -- Ages and Ages Returning at Intervals -- As adam Early in the Morning -- From "Calamus" In Paths Untrodden -- Scented Herbage of My Breast -- I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing -- When I Heard at the Close of the Day -- Here the Frailest Leaves of Me -- I Dream'd in a Dream -- From "Drum-Taps" Beat! Beat! Drums! -- Cavalry Crossing a Ford -- Bivouac on a Mountain Side -- By the Bivouac's Fitful Flame -- The Wound-Dresser -- A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim -- To the Leaven'd Soil they Trod -- O Captain! My Captain! -- When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd -- Sparkles From the Wheel -- A Noiseless Patient Spider -- To a Locomotive in Winter -- Good-Bye My Fancy! / Walt Whitman.

The Portent -- Misgivings -- The Conflict of Convictions -- The March into Virginia -- A Utilitarian View of the Monitor's Fight -- Shiloh -- Malvern Hill -- The House-Top -- A Dirge for McPherson -- On the Grave of a Young Cavalry Officer Killed in the Valley of Virginia -- Commemorative of a Naval Victory -- Epilogue (from "Clarel") -- The Æolian Harp -- The Maldive Shark -- The Berg -- Pebbles -- After the Pleasure Party -- The Ravaged Villa -- Monody -- Art / Herman Melville -- The Question -- Refrigerium -- Sonnets: Part I - XXII -- XXIV -- XXV -- XXVI -- Sonnets: Part II - VII -- VIII -- IX -- X -- XI -- XII -- XIII -- XIV -- XV -- XVI -- XVII -- XXXI -- XXXII -- XXXIII -- XXXIV / Frederick Goddard Tuckerman -- Charleston -- Spring -- The Unknown Dead -- Ode / Henry Timrod -- 49 I never lost as much but twice -- 67 Success is counted sweetest -- 76 Exultation is the going -- 80 Our lives are Swiss -- 126 To fight aloud, is very brave -- 128 Bring me the sunset in a cup -- 130 These are the days when birds come back -- 160 Just lost, when I was saved -- 165 A wounded deer, leaps highest -- 187 How many times these low feet staggered -- 214 I taste a liquor never brewed -- 216 Safe in their alabaster chambers -- 241 I like a look of agony -- 249 Wild nights-wild nights -- 258 There's a certain slant of light -- 280 I felt a funeral, in my brain -- 287 A clock stopped -- 290 Of bronze-and blaze -- 303 The soul selects her own society -- 318 I'll tell you how the sun rose -- 322 There came a day at summer's full -- 328 A bird came down the walk -- 341 After great pain, a formal feeling comes -- 348 I dreaded that first robin, so -- 376 Of course-I prayed -- 378 I saw no way-the Heavens were stitched -- 401 What soft-cherubic creatures -- 435 Much madness is divinest sense / Emily Dickinson.

441 This is my letter to the world -- 448 This was a poet, it is that -- 449 I died for beauty-but was scarce -- 465 I heard a fly buzz-when I died -- 474 They put us far apart -- 502 At least-to pray-is left-is left -- 511 If you were coming in the fall -- 526 To hear an oriole sing -- 536 The heart asks pleasure-first -- 556 The brain, within it's groove -- 585 I like to see it lap the miles -- 620 It makes no difference abroad -- 640 I cannot live with you -- 650 Pain-has an element of blank -- 657 I dwell in possibility -- 664 Of all the souls that stand create -- 675 Essential oils-are wrung -- 712 Because I could not stop for death -- 721 Behind me-dips eternity -- 742 Four trees-upon a solitary acre -- 754 My life had stood-a loaded gun -- 764 Presentiment-is that long shadow-on the lawn -- 813 This quiet dust was gentlemen and ladies -- 822 This consciousness that is aware -- 829 Ample make this bed -- 861 Split the lark-and you'll find the music -- 870 Finding is the first act -- 875 I stepped from plank to plank -- 888 When I have seen the sun emerge -- 946 It is an honorable thought -- 949 Under the light, yet under -- 985 The missing all, prevented me -- 986 A narrow fellow in the grass -- 997 Crumbling is not an instant's act -- 1052 I never saw a moor -- 1068 Further in summer than the birds -- 1072 Title divine-is mine -- 1078 The bustle in a house -- 1082 Revolution is the pod -- 1084 At half past three, a single bird -- 1129 Tell all the truth but tell it slant -- 1176 We never know how high we are -- 1207 He preached upon "Breadth" till it argued him narrow -- 1243 Safe despair it is that raves -- 1304 Not with a club, the heart is broken -- 1333 A little madness in the spring -- 1393 Lay this laurel on the one -- 1463 A route of evanescence -- 1540 As imperceptibly as grief -- 1587 He ate and drank the precious words -- 1612 The auctioneer of parting -- 1624 Apparently with no surprise -- 1670 In winter in my room -- 1672 Lightly stepped a yellow star -- 1695 There is a solitude of space -- 1712 A pit-but Heaven over it -- 1732 My life closed twice before its close / Emily Dickinson -- Thar's more in the man than thar is in the land -- Corn -- The Symphony -- The Waving of the Corn -- Evening Song -- Song of the Chattahoochee -- The Harlequin of Dreams -- The Revenge of Hamish -- The Marshes of Glynn -- A Ballad of Trees and the Master / Sidney Lanier -- Glouchester Moors -- An Ode in Time of Hesitation -- On a Soldier Fallen in the Philippines -- The Menagerie -- The Bracelet of Grass -- Faded Pictures -- Thammuz / William Vaughn Moody -- George Crabbe -- Luke Havergal -- Credo -- Cliff Klingenhagen -- How Annandale went out -- Miniver Cheevy -- For a Dead Lady -- The Gift of God -- Hillcrest -- Eros Turannos -- Bewick Finzer -- The Man Against the Sky -- Demos -- The Dark Hills -- Mr. Flood's Party -- The Sheaves -- Karma / Edwin Arlington Robinson -- From "The Black Riders" - I -- III -- VI -- VIII -- IX -- X -- XII -- XIV -- XVIII -- XIX -- XXI -- XXIII -- XXIV -- XXVIII -- XXIX -- XXXIV -- XXXIX -- XLI -- XLVI -- XLIX -- LI -- LIV -- LX -- LXVI -- LXVII -- The Blue Battalions -- From "War is Kind" - [I] -- [VI] -- [VII] -- [XI] -- [XII] -- [XVIII] -- [XIX] -- [XXI] -- [XXIII] -- Three Poems / Stephen Crane.

The Tuft of Flowers -- Mending Wall -- Home Burial -- After Apple-Picking -- The Road Not Taken -- The Oven Bird -- The Witch of Coös -- Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening -- For Once, Then, Something -- The Onset -- To Earthward -- Two Look at Two -- Acquainted with the Night -- West-Running Brook -- Two Tramps in Mud Time -- Desert Places -- Neither Out Far Nor in Deep -- Design -- The Gift Outright -- Directive / Robert Frost -- Chicago -- Sketch -- Fog -- Pool -- Prayers of Steel -- Wilderness -- Handfuls -- Cool Tombs -- Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind -- When Death Came April Twelve 1945 / Carl Sandburg -- Domination of Black -- The Snow Man -- Le Monocle de Mon Oncle -- A High-Toned Old Christian Woman -- The Emperor of Ice-Cream -- Sunday Morning -- Anecdote of the Jar -- To the One of Fictive Music -- Peter Quince at the Clavier -- Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird -- Sea Surface Full of Clouds -- The Idea of Order at Key West -- Anglais Mort À Florence -- A Postcard from the Volcano -- Study of Two Pears -- The Glass of Water -- The Sense of the Sleight-of-Hand Man -- Mrs. Alfred Uruguay -- Asides on the Oboe -- The Motive for Metaphor -- Credences of Summer -- To an Old Philosopher in Rome -- The Rock -- The World as Meditation -- As You Leave the Room / Wallace Stevens -- Tract -- The Widow's Lament in Springtime -- Queen-Ann's-Lace -- Spring and All -- To Elsie -- Rain -- The Yachts -- These -- Preface to Paterson: Book One -- The Semblables -- Burning the Christmas Greens -- The Injury / Ezra Pound -- Portrait d'Une Femme -- The Seafarer -- A Virginal -- The Return -- Lament of the Frontier Guard -- Liu Ch'e -- Hugh Selwyn Mauberley -- Canto I -- Canto II / William Carlos Williams -- Adonis -- Heat -- Pear Tree -- Oread -- From Citron-Bower -- Erige Cor Tuum Ad Me in Caelum / H.D. -- Night -- Birds -- Apology for Bad Dreams -- Hurt Hawks -- Promise of Peace -- The Eye -- Ocean -- My Burial Place -- Let Them Alone -- But I am Growing Old and Indolent / Robinson Jeffers -- Poetry -- The Steeple-Jack -- No Swan so Fine -- The Pangolin -- What are Years? -- The Mind is an Enchanting Thing -- In Distrust of Merits -- Armour's Undermining Modesty -- Tom Fool at Jamaica -- Melchior Vulpius / Maianne Moore -- Winter Remembered -- Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter -- Captain Carpenter -- Vision by Sweetwater -- Piazza Piece -- Antique Harvesters -- The Equilibrists -- Painted Head -- Master's in the Garden Again -- Prelude to an Evening / John Crowe Ransom.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock -- Sweeney Among the Nightingales -- Gerontion -- The Waste Land -- The Hollow Men -- Ash-Wednesday / T.S. Eliot -- The Road -- Sea Holly -- Elder Tree -- The Room -- Doctors' Row -- North Infinity Street -- The lovers -- Music / Conrad Aiken -- Ars Poetica -- The End of the World -- You, Andrew Marvell -- Immortal Autumn -- "Not Marble nor the Gilded Monuments" -- Pole Star -- Theory of Poetry / Archibald MacLeish -- O Sweet Spontaneous -- A Man Who Had Fallen Among Thieves -- "Next to of Course God America I -- Somewhere I have Never Travelled, Gladly Beyond -- Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town -- My Father Moved through Dooms of Love -- Pity this Busy Monster, Manunkind -- What if a Much of a Which of a WInd -- Now Does Our World Descend -- Enter No (Silence is the Blood Whose Flesh) / e.e. cummings -- Black Tambourine -- Praise for an Urn -- Chaplinesque -- Repose of Rivers -- The Wine Menagerie -- For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen -- At Melville's Tomb -- Voyages -- To Brooklyn Bridge (Proem to "The Bridge") -- The River (from "The Bridge") -- The Tunnel (from "The Bridge") -- O Carib Isle! -- Royal Palm -- The Hurricane -- The Broken Tower / Hart Crane -- Mr. Pope -- The Subway -- Ode to the Confederate Dead -- The Cross -- Sonnets at Christmas (1934) -- The Mediterranean -- Aeneas at Washington -- Pastoral -- Seasons of the Soul -- The Swimmers / Allen Tate -- Open House -- Cuttings, Later -- Dolor -- The Lost Son -- Elegy for Jane -- Four for Sir John Davies -- The Waking -- Words for the Wind -- The Song -- First Meditation (from "Meditations of an Old Woman") / Theodore Roethke -- The Dome of Sunday -- The Potomac -- Nostalgia -- Elegy for a Dead Soldier -- V-Letter -- The Sickness of Adam (from "Adam and Eve') / Karl Shapiro -- 90 North -- Second Air Force -- The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner -- A Camp in the Prussian Forest -- The Orient Express -- The Woman at the Washington Zoo / Randall Jarrell -- Winter Landscape -- Cloud and Flame -- The Dispossessed -- Three Around the Old Gentleman / John Berryman -- In Memory of Arthur Winslow -- Christmas Eve Under Hooker's Statue -- The Drunken Fisherman -- Children of Light -- The Exile's Return -- Colloquy in Black Rock -- The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket -- As a Plane Tree by the Water -- Mr. Edwards and the Spider -- After the Surprising Conversions -- Where the Rainbow Ends -- Falling Asleep Over the Aeneid -- Words for Hart Crane -- Skunk Hour -- The Public Garden / Robert Lowell -- First Snow in Alsace -- Bell Speech -- Still, Citizen Sparrow -- The Death of a Toad -- Lamarck Elaborated -- Pangloss's song: A Comic-Opera Lyric / Richard Wilbur -- The Heaven of Animals -- Between Two Prisoners -- The Scratch -- The Dusk of Horses -- The Beholders / James Dickey -- On an East Wind From the Wars -- Love Song: I and Thou -- Funeral Oration for a Mouse -- Elegy -- Plague of Dead Sharks / Alan Dugan -- Pleasures -- The Goddess -- Come into Animal Presence -- The Well -- The Novel / Denise Levertov -- Returned to Frisco, 1946 -- The Campus on the Hill -- April Inventory -- Heart's Needle: 5 -- A Flat One / W. D. Snodgrass -- Hart Crane -- The Way -- The Rose -- The Wife -- The Snow / Robert Creeley -- Dictum: For a Masque of Deluge -- When I Came From Colchis -- The Annunciation -- John Otto -- In the Night Fields / W. S. Merwin -- a Man Walking and Singing -- Canticle -- May Song -- Ascent -- The Guest -- November 26, 1963 / Wendell Berry.