The ultimate reader’s companion to poetry: a selection of 100 classic poems from five centuries with lively “companion” commentary to go with and illuminate each poem. Modern poets include Delmore Schwartz, whose sense of conflict between self and society gave birth to this anthology’s title-poem, 'The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me'.

Neil Astley 11 Preface: The Making of the Heavy Bear Delmore Schwartz (1913–1966) 19 Introduction: The Heavy Bear Who Goes with Me Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) 25 ‘They flee from me that sometime did me seek’ Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517–1547) 27 'Wyatt resteth here' Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586) 30 ‘Thou blind man’s mark’ Edmund Spenser (1552–1599) 32 ‘One day I wrote her name upon the strand’ Chidiock Tichborne (1558–1586) 34 Elegy for Himself Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593) 36 Elegia VI Sir Walter Ralegh (1552–1618) 40 The Lie Robert Southwell (?1561–1595) 44 The Burning Babe Michael Drayton (1563–1631) 46 Since There’s No Help William Shakespeare (1564–1616) 48 Sonnet 73: ‘That time of year…’ Thomas Nashe (1567–1601) 50 ‘Adieu, farewell, earth’s bliss’ Thomas Campion (1567–1620) 53 What if a Day John Donne (1572–1631) 55 The Flea Ben Jonson (1572–1637) 58 On My First Son Robert Herrick (1591–1674) 60 Gather Ye Rosebuds Henry King (1592–1669) 62 Exequy upon His Wife George Herbert (1593–1633) 67 Love III Edmund Waller (1606–1687) 69 Go, Lovely Rose Richard Crashaw (1612/3–1649) 71 The Flaming Heart Richard Lovelace (1618–1658) 74 To Althea from Prison Anne Bradstreet (1612–1672) 76 A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment Henry Vaughan (1621–1695) 79 They Are All Gone into the World of Light! Andrew Marvell (1621–1678) 82 To His Coy Mistress John Milton (1608–1674) 86 from Paradise Lost Thomas Traherne (1637–1674) 89 Dreams John Dryden (1631–1700) 93 from Absalom and Achitophel John Oldham (1653–1683) 95 from The Third Satire of Juvenal, imitated Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) 101 A Description of a City Shower Alexander Pope (1688–1744) 104 Epistle to Miss Blount, On Her Leaving the Town, After the Coronation Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) 107 from London: A Poem Thomas Gray (1716–1771) 114 An Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard Christopher Smart (1722–1771) 120 from Jubilate Agno Oliver Goldsmith (c.1730–1774) 125 from The Deserted Village William Cowper (1731–1800) 129 The Poplar-Field William Blake (1757–1827) 131 The Tyger Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) 134 Kubla Khan William Wordsworth (1770–1850) 138 Upon Westminster Bridge Lord Byron (1788–1824) 140 Darkness Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) 146 Ode to the West Wind John Keats (1795–1821) 152 Ode to a Nightingale Thomas Hood (1799–1845) 158 I Remember, I Remember Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) 160 Tithonus John Clare (1793–1864) 163 I Am Robert Browning (1812–1889) 165 My Last Duchess Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) 169 How do I love thee? Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) 171 Stanzas (attr.) Emily Brontë (1818–1848) 173 Remembrance Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) 176 Dover Beach Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) 180 Remember Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1892) 182 Sudden Light Walt Whitman (1819–1892) 184 Native Moments Emily Dickinson (1822–1888) 186 Because I could not Stop for Death Alice Meynell (1847–1922) 188 Renouncement Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1899) 190 The Windhover George Meredith (1828–1909) 200 Lucifer in Starlight Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935) 202 Luke Havergal Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) 205 from The Ballad of Reading Gaol A.E. Housman (1859–1936) 215 Good creatures do you love your lives Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) 217 The Voice Charlotte Mew (1869–1928) 219 Madeleine in Church Walter de la Mare (1873–1956) 227 The Listeners Robert Frost (1874–1963) 229 The Road Not Taken Edward Thomas (1878–1918) 232 Adlestrop Isaac Rosenberg (1890–1918) 234 Break of Day in the Trenches Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967) 236 Base Details Wilfred Owen (1893–1918) 238 Strange Meeting W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) 241 The Second Coming] 242 Leda and the Swan Hart Crane (1899–1932) 247 My Grandmother’s Love Letters D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) 249 Snake Edna St Vincent Millay (1892–1950) 253 Sonnet: What my lips have kissed Langston Hughes (1902–1967) 255 The Negro Speaks of Rivers Marianne Moore (1887–1972) 257 A Grave Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) 259 The Snowman Elinor Wylie (1885–1928) 261 Full Moon E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) 262 ‘next to of course god america i’ Archibald Macleish (1892–1982) 264 Ars Poetica T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 267 The Journey of the Magi Patrick Kavanagh (1905–1967) 270 Shancoduff 270 Epic 276 Brendan Kennelly: ‘A Man I Knew’ Ruth Pitter (1897–1992) 277 The Coffin Worm Elizabeth Daryush (1887–1977) 279 ‘Anger lay by me all night long’ Sheila Wingfield (1906–1992) 281 from Beat Drum, Beat Heart W.H. Auden (1907–1973) 286 In Memory of W.B. Yeats Keith Douglas (1920–1944) 289 How to Kill Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) 291 Prayer Before Birth Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) 295 Do Not Go Gentle into That Goodnight Stevie Smith (1902–1971) 297 The River God Ted Hughes (1930–1998) 299 The Thought-Fox 300 from The Burnt Fox Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) 302 Morning Song Denise Levertov (1923–1997) 304 Living Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) 305 September Song Austin Clarke (1894–1974) 307 The Redemptorist W.S. Graham (1918–1986) 310 The Beast in the Space Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) 312 Diving into the Wreck Michael Longley (born 1939) 316 Wounds Derek Mahon (1941–2020) 319 A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979) 324 One Art Derek Walcott (1930–2017) 326 Love after Love Philip Larkin (1922–1985) 327 Aubade Anne Stevenson (1933–2020) 330 Poem for a Daughter Ken Smith (1938–2003) 332 Being the third song of Urias Seamus Heaney (1939–2013) 334 from Sweeney Astray Eavan Boland (1944–2020) 340 The Journey 348 References 352 Acknowledgements

We have chosen the title of Delmore Schwartz's poem as the anthology’s title, The Heavy Bear Who Goes with Me, for several reasons. Poems are written because of various kinds of "withness"; the sense of mortality, failure in love, the challenge of history, the nature of consciousness, dreams, loneliness, prejudice, inexplicable hatreds, the urge to make sense of confusion, the seething need to protest against forms of injustice, to talk to somebody about things only partly grasped or understood, or not grasped or understood at all but hurtful and pressing, violating sleep, miscolouring daylight’s encounters and images, the sense of suffering an appetite that can never really be fed… Every poem is an act of faith in that imaginative momentum; every poem longs to connect with that energy whether it be pressingly immediate or blatently ignored. This is the connecting power that enables Schwartz, for example, to bring the heavy bear lumbering into our lives. Our dialogue with the gross, barging presence follows that moment of admission. Our hope, as editors, is that we have provided an anthology of poems marked by dialogue and connection, although these poems may be, usually are, born of the awareness of mortality, failure, inadequacy, loss, absurd or gross caricatures or perversions of what we take to be reality. Why not have it out, once and for all, with the heavy bear who goes with us?