The Novelist As Poet

By Elizabeth Gaskell

Novelists stake their claim as artists on works that encapsulate a whole world of characters and narrative across many, usually hundreds of pages. Some also take in other disciplines; plays, short stories, essays but many have also written poetry. For some it is even their first love but for their audience it is too often forgotten; relegated behind their longer works. Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, The Brontes, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy are but a few of our illustrious authors who here reveal works every bit as tender, as expansive and just as good as their longer forms of work. Each would make a fine poet in their own right. We’re glad to be able to bring you another side to these incredible talents.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Copyright Group
• Release date: Jan 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781783947874

Book preview

The Novelist As Poet

Novelists stake their claim as artists on works that encapsulate a whole world of characters and narrative across many, usually hundreds of pages. Some also take in other disciplines; plays, short stories, essays but many have also written poetry.  For some it is even their first love but for their audience it is too often forgotten; relegated behind their longer works. Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, The Brontes, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy are but a few of our illustrious authors who here reveal works every bit as tender, as expansive and just as good as their longer forms of work.   Each would make a fine poet in their own right.  We’re glad to be able to bring you another side to these incredible talents.

We have also recorded many of these poems for a separate audiobook version which can be sampled and purchased at iTunes, Amazon and other digital stores. Our readers include Richard Mitchley and Ghizela Rowe

Index Of Poems

Louisa May Alcott - Lullaby

Jane Austen - Ode to Pity

Jane Austen - Oh! Mr Best You're Very Bad

RD Blackmore - To Fame

Anne Bronte - Gloomily The Clouds Are Sailing

Charlotte Bronte - Apostasy

Emily Bronte - Death, That Struck When I Was Most Confiding

Lewis Carroll - Hiawatha's Photographing

GK Chesterton - The Rolling English Road

GK Chesterton - The Mystery

Stephen Crane - Each Small Gleam Was a Voice

Stephen Crane - Many Red Devils Ran From My Heart

Charles Dickens - A Fine Old English Gentleman

Charles Dickens - The Ivy Green

Arthur Conan Doyle - A Ballad Of The Ranks

Arthur Conan Doyle - Empire Builders

George Eliot – Count That Day Lost

George Eliot - Sweet Endings Cone And Go Love

John Galsworthy – England To Free Men

John Galsworthy - Past

Elizabeth Gaskell - Sketches Among the Poor

Charlotte Perkins Gilman - Eternal Me

Oliver Goldsmith – The Double Transformation

Thomas Hardy - Lines On The Loss Of The Titanic

Thomas Hardy - Men Who March Away

Frances E W Harper - The Slave Mother

Frances E W Harper - My Mother's Kiss

Victor Hugo - The Beacon In The Storm

Henry James - This Curse

James Joyce - She Weeps Over Rahoon

Rudyard Kipling - If

Rudyard Kipling - To The City Of Bombay

Charles Kingsley - September 21 1870

DH Lawrence - Hyde Park At Night Before The War; Clerks

DH Lawrence - Piccadilly Circus At Night; Street Walkers

HP Lovecraft - Ode For July 4th 1917

Katherine Mansfield - Spring Wind In London

Christopher Marlowe - The Face That Launched A Thousand Ships

Christopher Marlowe - The Passionate Shepherd To His Love

Herman Melville - The Berg, A Dream

Herman Melville - Father Mapples Hymn

Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson - Impressions

Lucy Maud Montgomery - The Forest Path

Edith Nesbit - At Evening Time There Shall Be Light

Edith Nesbit - The Beatific Vision

Edgar Allan Poe - Annabel Lee

Walter Scott – Death Chant

Walter Scott – My Native Land

William Shakespeare - How Like A Winter Hath My Absence Been (Sonnet 97)

William Shakespeare - Shall I Compare Thee To A Summers Day (Sonnet 18)

William Shakespeare - Sonnet 116

Mary Shelley - Stanzas

Robert Louis Stevenson - I Who All The Winter Through

Robert Louis Stevenson - Christmas At Sea

JM Synge - A Wish

JM Synge - Dread

Tagore - The Gardener

Tagore - The Journey

William Makepeace Thackeray - The Mahogany Tree

William Makepeace Thackeray – Commanders Of The Faithful

Mark Twain - O Lord Our Father

Edith Wharton - An Autumn Sunset

Oscar Wilde - Her Voice

Oscar Wilde – Serenade

Louisa May Alcott - Lullaby

Now the day is done, 

Now the shepherd sun 

Drives his white flocks from the sky; 

Now the flowers rest 

On their mother's breast, 

Hushed by her low lullaby. 

Now the glowworms glance, 

Now the fireflies dance, 

Under fern-boughs green and high; 

And the western breeze 

To the forest trees 

Chants a tuneful lullaby. 

Now 'mid shadows deep 

Falls blessed sleep, 

Like dew from the summer sky; 

And the whole earth dreams, 

In the moon's soft beams, 

While night breathes a lullaby. 

Now, birdlings, rest, 

In your wind-rocked nest, 

Unscared by the owl's shrill cry; 

For with folded wings 

Little Brier swings, 

And singeth your lullaby. 

Jane Austen - Ode To Pity

1

Ever musing I delight to tread 

The Paths of honour and the Myrtle Grove 

Whilst the pale Moon her beams doth shed