English poetry

"And tell how far thou didst our Lily outshine, Or sporting Kid, or Marlowes mighty line."

"Old Chaucer, like the morning star, To us discovers day from far; His light those mists and clouds dissolved; Which our dark nation long involved: But he descending to the shades, Darkness again the age invades. Next, like Aurora, Spenser rose, Whose purple blush the day foreshows; The other three, with his own fires, Phoebus, the poets’ god, inspires; By Shakespeare’s, Jonson’s, Fletcher’s lines, Our stage’s lustre Rome’s outshines: These poets near our princes sleep, And in one grave their mansion keep."

"We must be free or die, who speak the tongue That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold Which Milton held. — In every thing we are sprung Of Earth’s first blood, have titles manifold."

"I have gathered the most of the Ballads into the middle of the Seventeenth Century; where they fill a languid interval between two winds of inspiration — the Italian dying down with Milton and the French following at the heels of the restored Royalists."

"Any anthologist of the unparagoned achievement that is English poetry must enjoy the pleasure, privilege, and responsibility of being for a while the master of its ceremonies. Or of being, at any rate, in the rueful Americanism, kinda humble and kinda proud."

"English poetry – having a life of its own – is forever being supplemented, complemented, culled, and found afresh. The anthologist had better not repine at the thought of his or her future departure."