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An e-edition of Paradise Lost based on the 1674 and 1667 editions, and Paradise Regained based on its original 1671 edition, both meticulously edited for faithfulness to the originals. Volume 4 in The Reader's Library Series. ISBN: 978-1-932023-46-6. https://www.facebook.com/williamralpheditions...

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from Book I of Paradise Lost “Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings A mind not to be chang’d by Place or Time. The mind is its own place, and in it self Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n. What matter where, if I be still the same, And what I should be, all but less then he Whom Thunder hath made greater? Here at least We shall be free; th’ Almighty hath not built Here for his envy, will not drive us hence: (260) Here we may reign secure, and in my choyce To reign is worth ambition though in Hell: Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n. But wherefore let we then our faithful friends, Th’ associates and copartners of our loss Lye thus astonisht on th’ oblivious Pool, And call them not to share with us their part In this unhappy Mansion, or once more With rallied Arms to try what may be yet Regaind in Heav’n, or what more lost in Hell? ”...

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Contents Introduction PARADISE LOST Book I Book II Book III Book IV Book V Book VI Book VII Book VIII Book IX Book X Book XI Book XII PARADISE REGAIN'D Book I Book II Book III Book IV About the Editor Also from William Ralph Press...

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A complete collection of the poems and poetic fragments of the great English language stylist and Jesuit priest, Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889). Volume 3 of The Reader's Library Series. ISBN: 978-1-932023-45-9. https://www.facebook.com/williamralpheditions...

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Spring and Fall to a young child   Márgarét, áre you gríeving Over Goldengrove unleaving? Leáves, líke the things of man, you With your fresh thoughts care for, can you? Áh! ás the heart grows older It will come to such sights colder By and by, nor spare a sigh Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; And yet you wíll weep and know why. Now no matter, child, the name: Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same. Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed What heart heard of, ghost guessed: It ís the blight man was born for, It is Margaret you mourn for....

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Contents Introduction Author’s Preface The Wreck of the Deutschland Penmaen Pool The Silver Jubilee God’s Grandeur The Starlight Night Spring The Lantern out of Doors The Sea and the Skylark The Windhover Pied Beauty Hurrahing in Harvest The Caged Skylark In the Valley of the Elwy The Loss of the Eurydice The May Magnificat Binsey Poplars Duns Scotus’s Oxford Henry Purcell Peace The Bugler’s First Communion Morning Midday and Evening Sacrifice Andromeda The Candle Indoors The Handsome Heart At the Wedding March Felix Randal Brothers Spring and Fall Inversnaid "As Kingfishers Catch Fire, Dragonflies Draw Flame" Ribblesdale The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo The Blessed Virgin Compared to the Air We Breathe To What Serves Mortal Beauty? Spelt from Sibyl’s Leaves (The Soldier) (Carrion Comfort) "No Worst There Is None Pitched Past Pitch of Grief" "To Seem the Stranger Lies My Lot My Life" "I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark Not Day" "Patience Hard Thing the Hard Thing But to Pray" "My Own Heart Let Me More Have Pity on Let" Tom’s Garland Harry Ploughman That Nature Is a Heraclitean Fi...

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A thoroughly representative selection of the poetry of John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester. Rochester (1647–1680) was among the worst (best?) of the Restoration rakes, and also one of the period’s best satirists employing a direct language rife with plenty of four-letter words and an obsessive indulgence of the most vulgar vernacular used on behalf of satirical shredding, scatological humor, and sexual candor. Volume 7 in The Reader's Library Series. ISBN: 978-1-932023-49-7 https://www.facebook.com/williamralpheditions...

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A Rodomontade on His Cruel Mistress Trust not that thing called woman: she is worse Than all ingredients crammed into a curse. Were she but ugly, peevish, proud, a whore, Poxed, painted, perjured, so she were no more, I could forgive her, and connive at this, Alleging still she but a woman is. But she is worse: in time she will forestall The Devil, and be the damning of us all....

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Contents Introduction A Pastoral Dialogue between Alexis and Strephon A Dialogue between Strephon and Daphne Song (Give Me Leave to Rail at You...) Song (Insulting Beauty, You Misspend...) Song (My Dear Mistress Has a Heart...) Woman's Honour (A Song) Song (To This Moment a Rebel...) Written in a Lady's Prayer Book The Discovery The Advice Under King Charles II's Picture The Platonic Lady Song (Phillis, Be Gentler, I Advise...) Epistle To Love The Imperfect Enjoyment A Ramble in St. James's Park On the Women about Town Song (Quoth the Duchess of Cleveland...) Song (Love a Woman? You’re an Ass!...) Upon His Drinking Bowl Grecian Kindness Signior Dildo A Satire on Charles II Tunbridge Wells Upon His Leaving His Mistress Against Constancy To a Lady, in a Letter Song (Leave This Gaudy Gilded Stage...) The Fall The Mistress (A Song) Song (Absent from Thee I Languish Still...) A Song of a Young Lady to Her Ancient Lover Song (All My Past Life Is Mine No More...) A Satire against Reason and Mankind A Letter from Artemesia in the Town to Chloe in the Country The Disabled Debauchee Upon Nothing A...

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A complete and unabridged e-edition of the collected verse of John Donne. Donne, 1572–1631, was born in London, England, and, as evidenced by the verse collected here, is one of the great English language poets and thinkers in modern history illuminating the human condition through a verse marked for its argument, metaphysical conceit, metaphorical illuminations, and deep passions, whether they be focussed on love, God (two of Donne's favorite foci), or some other theme. While his poetry is dense, it is also inspiring, wise, and an essential and vital piece in the evolution of western verse. Volume 6 in The Reader's Library Series. ISBN: 978-1-932023-48-0 https://www.facebook.com/williamralpheditions...

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"Batter my heart, three person’d God..." Batter my heart, three person’d God; for, you As yet but knock, breath, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise, and stand, o’rthrow me,’and bend Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new. I, like an usurpt Town, to another due, Labour to admit you, but oh, to no end. Reason your Viceroy in me, me should defend, But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue, Yet dearly’I love you and would be lov’d fain, But am betroth’d unto your enemy, Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again, Take me to you, imprison me, for I Except you’enthral me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me....

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Contents Introduction SONGS AND SONNETS The Flea The Good-Morrow Song ("Goe, and catch a falling starre...") Woman's Constancy The Undertaking The Sun Rising The Indifferent Love's Usury Canonization The Triple Fool Lovers' Infiniteness Song ("Sweetest Love, I doe not goe...") The Legacy A Feaver Air and Angels Breake of Day The Anniversary A Valediction of My Name, in the Window Twicknam Garden Valediction to His Book Community Love's Growth Love's Exchange Confined Love The Dream A Valediction of Weeping Love's Alchymy The Curse The Message A Nocturnal upon St. Lucie's Day Being the Shortest Day Witchcraft by a Picture The Bait The Apparition The Broken Heart A Valediction Forbidding Mourning The Extasie Love's Deity Love's Diet The Will The Funeral The Blossom The Primrose, Being at Mountgomery Castle upon the Hill, on Which It Is Situate The Relique The Damp The Dissolution A Jeat Ring Sent Negative Love The Prohibition The Expiration The Computation The Paradox Farewell to Love A Lecture upon the Shadow EPIGRAMS Epigrams ELEGIES Elegie I Elegie II Elegie III El...

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A selection of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's essential poems. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) was an English poet, critic, and philosopher. His Lyrical Ballads, published in 1798 with co-author William Wordsworth, marked the beginning for all intents and purposes of English Romanticism and included “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Other notable poems include "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison," “Christabel” and “Kubla Khan.” Volume 2 in The Reader's Library Series, ISBN: 978-1-932023-44-2. https://www.facebook.com/williamralpheditions...

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Kubla Khan Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.   In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round; And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! A savage place! as holy and enchanted As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover! And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced: Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail: And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever It flung up momently the sacred river. Five miles meandering with a mazy motion Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, Then rea...

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Contents Introduction Sonnet: To the Autumnal Moon A Mathematical Problem To the Rev. George Coleridge I II III IV Sonnet: On Quitting School for College Sonnet: To the River Otter On a Discovery Made Too Late The Eolian Harp Lines in the Manner of Spenser Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement Sonnet: Composed on a Journey Homeward; the Author Having Received Intelligence of the Birth of a Son, Sept. 20, 1796 Sonnet: On Receiving a Letter Informing Me of the Birth of a Son Sonnet: To A Friend Who Asked How I Felt When the Nurse First Presented My Infant to Me This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Argument Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part V Part VI Part VII Fire, Famine, and Slaughter A War Eclogue Frost at Midnight Kubla Khan Fears in Solitude The Nightingale The Wanderings of Cain Prefatory Note The Wanderings of Cain The Devil's Thoughts I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI XVII Christabel Preface Part I Part II Dejection: An Ode [Written April 4, 1802] I II III IV V VI VII VIII The Language of Birds T...

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A meticulously edited edition of John Keats’ verse collecting all of his poems sans his two long verse plays. Keats was born in London, England, on October 31, 1795. He dedicated his short life to the creation of poetry characterized by its sensuous and vivid imagery, classical themes, technical mastery and sincere and authentic emotional tenor. He died tragically young in 1821 of tuberculosis, a disease that had plagued his life since he took a walking tour of the Lake District in 1818. Volume 5 in The Reader's Library Series. ISBN: 978-1-932023-47-3 https://www.facebook.com/williamralpheditions...

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Ode to a Nightingale I My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains     My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains     One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: ’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,     But being too happy in thine happiness,—         That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,             In some melodious plot     Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,         Singest of summer in full-throated ease.   II O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been     Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth, Tasting of Flora and the country green,     Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth! O for a beaker full of the warm South,     Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,         With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,             And purple-stained mouth;     That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,         And with thee fade away into the forest dim:   III Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget     What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret     Here, where men sit and hear each ...

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Contents Introduction Imitation of Spencer On Peace On Death Lines Written on 29 May, the Anniversary of Charles’ Restoration, on Hearing Bells Ringing Song: Stay, Ruby Breasted Warbler, Stay Fill for Me a Brimming Bowl As from the Darkening Gloom a Silver Dove To Lord Byron To Chatterton Written on the Day that Mr. Leigh Hunt Left Prison To Hope Ode to Apollo To Some Ladies On Receiving a Curious Shell, and a Copy of Verses, from the Same Ladies To Emma Woman! When I Behold Thee Flippant, Vain Sonnet to Solitude Epistle to George Felton Mathew To —— (Had I a Man's Fair Form...) To —— (Hadst Thou Liv'd in Days of Old...) I Am As Brisk Women, Wine, and Snuff Specimen of an Induction to a Poem Calidore To One Who Has Been Long in City Pent Oh! How I Love, on a Fair Summer's Eve To a Friend Who Sent Me Some Roses Happy Is England! I Could Be Content To My Brother George Epistle to My Brother George Epistle to Charles Cowden Clarke How Many Bards Gild the Lapses of Time! On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer Keen, Fitful Gusts Are Whisp’ring Here and There On Leaving Some Friends at an Early Hou...