- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- John Gower (1330?–1408)
- from Confessio Amantis
- William Langland (1330?–1386?)
- from The Vision of Piers Plowman
- Geoffrey Chaucer (1343?–1400)
- from The Canterbury Tales
- Thomas Hoccleve (1367?–1426)
- from La Male Regle de T. Hoccleue
- John Lydgate (1370?–1449/50)
- from King Henry VI’s Triumphal Entry into London
- Anon. (15th century)
- London Lickpenny
- John Skelton (1460?–1529)
- from Collyn Clout
- Anon. (1500?)
- “London, thou art of townes A per se”
- Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503–1542)
- “Tagus, farewell, that westward with thy streams”
- “Who list his wealth and ease retain”
- Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517?–1547)
- “London, hast thou accusèd me”
- Anne Askew (1521–1546)
- The Ballad Which Anne Askew Made and Sang When She Was in Newgate
- George Turberville (1544?–1597?)
- The Lover to the Thames of London, to Favour His Lady Passing Thereon
- Isabella Whitney (1548?–?)
- The Manner of Her Will, and What She Left to London and to All Those in It, at Her Departing
- Edmund Spenser (1552?–1599)
- Prothalamion
- George Peele (1556–1596)
- from King Edward the First
- Chidiock Tichborne (1558?–1586)
- Tichborne’s Elegy
- Michael Drayton (1563–1631)
- from Poly-Olbion
- William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
- from Henry VI, Part II
- from Henry V
- from Henry VIII
- Thomas Nashe (1567?–1601)
- from Summer’s Last Will and Testament
- Everard Guilpin (1572?–?)
- from Skialetheia
- Ben Jonson (1572?–1637)
- from The Devil Is an Ass
- On the Famous Voyage
- John Donne (1572–1631)
- Satire 1
- To Mr E. G.
- Epithalamion Made at Lincoln’s Inn
- Satire 4
- Twickenham Garden
- John Taylor (1580–1653)
- from The Sculler
- from Sir Gregory Nonsense’s News from No Place
- Philip Massinger (1583–1640)
- from The City Madam
- Francis Beaumont (1584–1616) and John Fletcher (1579–1625)
- from The Knight of the Burning Pestle
- Francis Beaumont (1584–1616)
- Letter to Ben Jonson
- On the Tombs in Westminster Abbey
- Thomas Freeman (1590?–1630?)
- from London’s Progress
- W. Turner (?)
- from Turner’s Dish of Lenten Stuff, or a Gallimaufry
- Abraham Holland (?–1626)
- from London, Look Back
- Robert Herrick (1591–1674)
- An Ode for Him [Ben Jonson]
- His Return to London
- His Tears to Thamasis
- Anon. (1640s, pub. 1662)
- London Sad London: An Echo
- Edmund Waller (1606–1687)
- On the Statue of King Charles I at Charing Cross
- On St. James’s Park, As Lately Improved by His Majesty
- John Milton (1608–1674)
- When the Assault Was Intended to the City
- Sir John Suckling (1609–1642)
- A Ballad upon a Wedding
- Thomas Jordan (1612?–1685)
- from The Cheaters Cheated
- from The Triumphs of London
- A Song Sung at the Lord Mayor’s Table in Honor of the City and the Goldsmiths Company
- Sir John Denham (1615–1669)
- from Cooper’s Hill
- Abraham Cowley (1618–1667)
- from The Civil War
- Richard Lovelace (1618–1657/8)
- To Althea, from Prison: Song
- Simon Ford (1619?–1699)
- from London’s Resurrection
- Henry Vaughan (1621–1695)
- A Rhapsody
- Anon. (17th century)
- The Cries of London
- Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)
- An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland
- John Dryden (1631–1700)
- from Annus Mirabilis
- from MacFlecknoe
- Anon. (pub. 1680)
- In the Fields of Lincoln’s Inn
- John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647–1680)
- from A Letter from Artemisa in the Town to Chloe in the Country
- Song (“Quoth the Duchess of Cleveland to Counselor Knight”)
- A Ramble in St. James’s Park
- John Oldham (1653–1683)
- from A Satire in Imitation of the Third of Juvenal
- Anon. (1684)
- A Winter Wonder; or the Thames Frozen Over, with Remarks on the Resort There
- Anon. (1684)
- from The Wonders of the Deep
- Pierre Antoine Motteux (1660–1718)
- A Song
- Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
- A Description of the Morning
- A Description of a City Shower
- Clever Tom Clinch
- A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed
- from On Poetry: A Rhapsody
- John Gay (1685–1732)
- from Trivia: or, The Art of Walking the Streets of London
- from The Beggar’s Opera
- Anon. (pub. 1719)
- The Fair Lass of Islington
- Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
- The Alley. An Imitation of Spenser</li>
- A Farewell to London in the Year 1715
- Epistle to Miss Blount, on her Leaving the Town, after the Coronation
- from The Dunciad
- Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762)
- from Six Town Eclogues
- Elizabeth Tollet (1694–1754)
- On the Prospect from Westminster Bridge, March 1750
- John Bancks (1709–1751)
- A Description of London
- Anon. (1739)
- Hail, London!
- Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
- from London
- Nursery Rhymes (pub. 18th–19th centuries)
- London Bridge
- Oranges and Lemons
- “Pussy cat, pussy cat, where have you been?”
- “Poussie, poussie, baudrons”
- “Up at Piccadilly oh!”
- “See-saw, sacradown”
- “Upon Paul’s steeple stands a tree”
- “As I was going o’er London Bridge”
- “I had a little hobby horse, it was well shod”
- Pop Goes the Weasel
- William Whitehead (1715–1785)
- The Sweepers
- Oliver Goldsmith (1729–1774)
- Description of an Author’s Bedchamber
- William Cowper (1731–1800)
- from The Task
- Charles Jenner (1736–1774)
- from Town Eclogues
- Anna Letitia Barbauld (1743–1825)
- Song for the London Volunteers
- West End Fair
- Charles Dibdin (1745?–1814)
- The Jolly Young Waterman
- Poll of Wapping
- Hannah More (1745–1833)
- from The Gin-Shop; or, A Peep into Prison
- Mary Robinson (1757–1800)
- London’s Summer Morning
- William Blake (1757–1827)
- Holy Thursday
- The Chimney Sweeper
- London
- from Jerusalem
- Joanna Baillie (1762–1851)
- London
- William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
- The Farmer of Tilsbury Vale
- The Reverie of Poor Susan
- Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
- from The Prelude
- James Smith (1775–1839) and Horace Smith (1779–1849)
- from Horace in London
- Leigh Hunt (1784–1859)
- To Hampstead
- Description of Hampstead
- Lord Byron (1788–1824)
- from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
- from Don Juan
- Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
- from Letter to Maria Gisborne
- from Peter Bell the Third
- John Hamilton Reynolds (1794–1852)
- Sonnet
- John Keats (1795–1821)
- “To one who has been long in city pent”
- On Seeing the Elgin Marbles
- Lines on the Mermaid Tavern
- Thomas Hood (1799–1845)
- Moral Reflections on the Cross of St. Paul’s
- The Lord Mayor’s Show
- Sonnet to Vauxhall
- The Workhouse Clock: An Allegory
- Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838)
- Scenes in London: Piccadilly
- Winthrop Mackworth Praed (1802–1839)
- Goodnight to the Season
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)
- from Aurora Leigh
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892)
- from In Memoriam
- from Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington
- Cleopatra’s Needle
- Anon. (1851)
- Have You Been to the Crystal Palace?
- Robert Browning (1812–1889)
- from Waring
- Edward Lear (1812–1888)
- There Was an Old Person of Putney
- There Was an Old Man of Blackheath
- There Was a Young Person of Kew
- There Was an Old Person of Bow
- There Was a Young Lady of Greenwich
- There Was an Old Person of Ealing
- There Was an Old Person of Bromley
- There Was an Old Person of Sheen
- There Was an Old Man of Thames Ditton
- Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861)
- To the Great Metropolis
- In the Great Metropolis
- “Blessed are those who have not seen”
- “Ye flags of Piccadilly”
- Anon. (19th century)
- from The Cries of London
- George Eliot (1819–1880)
- In a London Drawingroom
- Anon. (1869)
- Strike of the London Cabmen
- Frederick Locker-Lampson (1821–1895)
- St. James’s Street
- Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
- Lines Written in Kensington Gardens
- West London
- East London
- Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882)
- Tiber, Nile, and Thames
- Coventry Patmore (1823–1896)
- A London Fête
- James Thomson (1834–1882)
- from Sunday at Hampstead
- Henry S. Leigh (1837–1883)
- A Cockney’s Evening Song
- Anon. (1893)
- Bloomsbury
- Austin Dobson (1840–1921)
- A New Song of the Spring Garden
- Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
- Beyond the Last Lamp
- The Coronation
- In the British Museum
- In St. Paul’s a While Ago
- Coming Up Oxford Street: Evening
- A Refusal
- To a Tree in London
- Christmas in the Elgin Room
- W.H. Hudson (1841–1922)
- To a London Sparrow
- Robert Bridges (1844–1930)
- London Snow
- Trafalgar Square
- W.E. Henley (1849–1903)
- from London Voluntaries
- from London Types
- Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
- Impression du Matin
- John Davidson (1857–1909)
- London
- Thirty Bob a Week
- In the Isle of Dogs
- Fog
- from The Thames Embankment
- A.E. Housman (1859–1936)
- “From the wash the laundress sends”
- Mary E. Coleridge (1861–1907)
- In London Town
- Amy Levy (1861–1889)
- A March Day in London
- Straw in the Street
- London Poets
- Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936)
- In Partibus
- The River’s Tale
- London Stone
- The Craftsman
- from Epitaphs of the War
- Arthur Symons (1865–1945)
- from London Nights
- from Décor de Théâtre
- London
- W.B. Yeats (1865–1939)
- from Vacillation
- Lionel Johnson (1867–1902)
- London Town
- By the Statue of King Charles at Charing Cross
- Charlotte Mew (1869–1928)
- In Nunhead Cemetery
- Laurence Binyon (1869–1943)
- As I Walked Through London
- T.E. Hulme (1883–1917)
- The Embankment
- Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
- Portrait d’une Femme
- The Garden
- Simulacra
- from Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
- D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930)
- Flat Suburbs, S.W., in the Morning
- from Guards
- Bombardment
- Hyde Park at Night, Before the War
- Embankment at Night, Before the War
- Town in 1917
- Frances Cornford (1886–1960)
- London Streets
- Parting in Wartime
- Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967)
- Monody on the Demolition of Devonshire House
- T.S. Eliot (1888–1965)
- from The Waste Land
- from Sweeney Agonistes
- from Four Quartets
- Isaac Rosenberg (1890–1918)
- Fleet Street
- Richard Aldington (1892–1962)
- St. Mary’s, Kensington
- In the Tube
- Hampstead Heath
- London
- Whitechapel
- Eros and Psyche
- Wilfred Owen (1893–1918)
- “I Am the Ghost of Shadwell Stair”
- Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893–1978)
- Song from the Bride of Smithfield
- East London Cemetery
- John Rodker (1894–1955)
- The Shop
- The Searchlight
- Robert Graves (1895–1985)
- Armistice Day, 1918
- A.S.J. Tessimond (1902–1962)
- Tube Station
- London
- Summer Night at Hyde Park Corner
- Autumn
- The City: Midday Nocturne
- Stevie Smith (1902–1971)
- Suburb
- William Empson (1906–1984)
- Homage to the British Museum
- John Betjeman (1906–1984)
- The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel
- In Westminster Abbey
- Parliament Hill Fields
- St. Saviour’s, Aberdeen Park, Highbury London, N.
- The Metropolitan Railway
- Business Girls
- N.W.5 & N.6
- from Summoned by Bells
- Louis MacNeice (1907–1963)
- from Autumn Journal (V)
- The British Museum Reading Room
- Goodbye to London
- Charon
- Stephen Spender (1909–1995)
- Hampstead Autumn
- Epilogue to a Human Drama
- Bernard Spencer (1909–1963)
- Regent’s Park Terrace
- Train to Work
- Mervyn Peake (1911–1968)
- London Buses
- Kenneth Allott (1912–1973)
- Memento Mori
- Roy Fuller (1912–1991)
- First Winter of War
- Battersea: After Dunkirk, June 3, 1940
- London Air-Raid, 1940
- Anne Ridler (1912–2001)
- Wentworth Place: Keats Grove
- George Barker (1913–1991)
- Kew Gardens
- Alun Lewis (1915–1944)
- Westminster Abbey
- Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
- from Redcliffe Square
- from Winter and London
- Nicholas Moore (1918–1986)
- Monmouth Street
- John Heath-Stubbs (1918–2006)
- London Architecture 1960s
- Lament for the “Old Swan”, Notting Hill Gate
- W.S. Graham (1918–1986)
- The Night City
- Muriel Spark (1918–2006)
- from A Tour of London
- Keith Douglas (1920–1944)
- from The “Bête Noire” Fragments
- D.J. Enright (1920–2002)
- The Stations of King’s Cross
- Philip Larkin (1922–1985)
- Deceptions
- Naturally the Foundation Will Bear the Expenses
- Donald Davie (1922–1995)
- To Londoners
- Dannie Abse (1923–2014)
- Street Scene
- Soho: Saturday Night
- James Berry (1924–)
- Two Black Labourers on a London Building Site
- Beginning in a City, 1948
- John Ashbery (1927–)
- The Tower of London
- Thom Gunn (1929–2004)
- Autobiography
- Talbot Road
- Connie Bensley (1929–)
- Vauxhall
- Bottleneck
- Peter Porter (1929–2010)
- Thomas Hardy at Westbourne Park Villas
- U.A. Fanthorpe (1929–2009)
- Rising Damp
- Widening the Westway
- Ted Hughes (1930–1998)
- Fate Playing
- Epiphany
- Derek Walcott (1930–)
- from Omeros
- Alan Brownjohn (1931–)
- A202
- Ruth Fainlight (1931–)
- The Same Power
- Geoffrey Hill (1932–)
- Churchill’s Funeral
- To the High Court of Parliament
- Sylvia Plath (1932–1963)
- Parliament Hill Fields
- Anne Stevenson (1933–)
- Cashpoint Charlie
- Fleur Adcock (1934–)
- Miss Hamilton in London
- Londoner
- To Marilyn from London
- John Fuller (1937–)
- from London Songs
- from The Shires
- Ken Smith (1938–2003)
- from The London Poems
- Seamus Heaney (1939–2013)
- The Underground
- District and Circle
- Lee Harwood (1939–)
- Rain journal: London: June 65
- Grey Gowrie (1939–)
- Outside Biba’s
- Joseph Brodsky (1940–1996)
- from In England
- Derek Mahon (1941–)
- Sunday Morning
- Hugo Williams (1942–)
- Tavistock Square
- Bar Italia
- Bar Italia
- Notting Hill
- Iain Sinclair (1943–)
- bunhill fields
- hurricane drummers: self-aid in haggerston
- Mimi Khalvati (1944–)
- Earls Court
- Carol Rumens (1944–)
- Pleasure Island, Marble Arch
- Wendy Cope (1945–)
- Lonely Hearts
- After the Lunch
- Peter Reading (1946–2011)
- from Perduta Gente
- Christopher Reid (1949–)
- North London Sonnet
- Exasperated Piety
- Gillian Allnutt (1949–)
- Museum, 19 Princelet Street, Spitalfields
- John Agard (1949–)
- Toussaint L’Ouverture Acknowledges Wordsworth’s Sonnet “To Toussaint L’Ouverture”
- Chilling Out Beside the Thames
- Grace Nichols (1950–)
- Island Man
- Charles Boyle (1951–)
- The Miracle at Shepherd’s Bush
- Andrew Motion (1952–)
- London Plane
- Linton Kwesi Johnson (1952–)
- Sonny’s Lettah
- Jo Shapcott (1953–)
- St. Bride’s
- Michael Donaghy (1954–2004)
- The River Glideth of His Own Sweet Will
- Poem on the Underground
- Jeremy Reed (1954–)
- Quentin Crisp as Prime Minister
- from Sainthood: Elegies for Derek Jarman
- John Stammers (1954–)
- John Keats Walks Home Following a Night Spent Reading Homer with Cowden Clarke
- Carol Ann Duffy (1955–)
- Woman Seated in the Underground, 1941
- Alan Jenkins (1955–)
- from The London Dissector
- Jamie McKendrick (1955–)
- Occupations of Bridewell
- Penal Architecture
- The Deadhouse
- Mick Imlah (1956–2009)
- Cockney
- Sarah Maguire (1957–)
- Almost the Equinox
- Michael Hofmann (1957–)
- From Kensal Rise to Heaven
- From A to B and Back Again
- Malvern Road
- Maura Dooley (1957–)
- Smash the Windows
- David Kennedy (1959–)
- The Bombs, July 2005
- Fred d’Aguiar (1960–)
- Home
- Lavinia Greenlaw (1962–)
- River History
- Glyn Maxwell (1962–)
- The Fires by the River
- Simon Armitage (1963–)
- KX
- Alice Oswald (1966–)
- Another Westminster Bridge
- Daljit Nagra (1966–)
- Yobbos!
- Nick Laird (1975–)
- The Tip
- Heather Phillipson (1978–)
- German Phenomenology Makes Me Want to Strip and Run through North London
- Ben Borek (1980–)
- from Donjong Heights
- Tom Chivers (1983–)
- Big Skies over Docklands
- Ahren Warner (1986–)
- Διόνυσος [Dionysus]
- Credits
- Index of Poets
- Index of Titles


London
A History in Verse
Product Details
PAPERBACK
$31.00 • £26.95 • €28.95
ISBN 9780674088047
Publication Date: 11/16/2015
Educators: Request an Exam Copy (Learn more)
Media Requests: [Email Address]