American Sonnets: An Anthology

edited by david bromwich

• John Quincy Adams (1767–1848)

  • To the Sun-Dial

• Washington Allston (1779–1843)

  • On the Luxembourg Gallery

• William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878)

  • November

  • To an American Painter Departing for Europe

• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)

  • Mezzo Cammin

  • from Divina Commedia

    • I. “Oft have I seen at some cathedral door”

  • The Sound of the Sea

  • Nature

  • The Harvest Moon

  • The Cross of Snow

• Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)

  • To Science

• Jones Very (1813–1880)

  • The Columbine

  • The New Birth

  • The Garden

  • The Latter Rain

  • The Dead

  • Thy Brother’s Blood

  • Nature

  • The Children

  • Autumn Leaves

  • The Barberry Bush

  • The Hand and Foot

  • Yourself

  • The Lost

  • from The Origin of Man

    • “Man has forgot his Origin; in vain”

• Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

  • from A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

    • “This is my Carnac, whose unmeasured dome”

• James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)

  • The Street

• Frederick Goddard Tuckerman (1821–1873)

  • from Sonnets, First Series

    • VII. “Dank fens of cedar, hemlock branches gray”

    • X. “An upper chamber in a darkened house”

    • XXVIII. “Not the round natural world, not the deep mind”

  • from Sonnets, Second Series

    • VII. “His heart was in his garden; but his brain”

    • XV. “Gertrude and Gulielma, sister-twins”

    • XVI. “Under the mountain, as when first I knew”

    • XVIII. “And change with hurried hand has swept these scenes”

    • XXIX. “How oft in schoolboy-days, from the school’s sway”

    • XXX. “Yet even mid merry boyhood’s tricks and scapes”

    • XXXII. “O for the face and footstep! woods and shores”

  • from Sonnets, Third Series

    • IV. “Thin little leaves of wood fern, ribbed and toothed”

    • VI. “I looked across the rollers of the deep”

    • VII. “O rest divine! O golden certainty”

    • IX. “But into order falls our life at last”

    • X. “Sometimes I walk where the deep water dips”

  • from Sonnets, Fourth Series

    • I. “Still, like a city, seated on a height”

    • VIII. “Nor strange it is, to us who walk in bonds”

  • from Sonnets, Fifth Series

    • “And yet tonight, when summer daylight dies”

    • XVI. “Let me give something!—as the years unfold”

• Helen Hunt Jackson (1830–1885)

  • Crossed Threads

• Emma Lazarus (1849–1887)

  • The New Colossus

  • Long Island Sound

• Edwin Markham (1852–1940)

  • In Death Valley

• Lizette Woodworth Reese (1856–1935)

  • April in Town

• Louise Imogen Guiney (1861–1920)

  • The Lights of London

• George Santayana (1863–1952)

  • from Sonnets, 1883–1893

    • I. “O world, thou choosest not the better part!”

    • XVI. “A thousand beauties that have never been”

  • from To W. P.

    • “With you a part of me hath passed away”

  • from Sonnets, 1895

    • XXIX. “What riches have you that you deem me poor”

• Richard Hovey (1864–1900)

  • Accident in Art

• Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935)

  • Dear Friends

  • Sonnet (“Oh for a poet—for a beacon bright”)

  • The Clerks

  • George Crabbe

  • On the Night of a Friend’s Wedding

  • The Pity of the Leaves

  • L’Envoi

  • Lost Anchors

  • Many Are Called

  • The Sheaves

  • from Not Always

    • “There were long days when there was nothing said"

  • New England

  • Reunion

• Robert Frost (1874–1963)

  • Into My Own

  • Mowing

  • Meeting and Passing

  • The Oven Bird

  • Putting in the Seed

  • The Investment

  • The Master Speed

  • Design

  • On a Bird Singing in Its Sleep

  • Unharvested

  • The Silken Tent

  • Never Again Would Birds’ Song Be the Same

• Trumbull Stickney (1874–1904)

  • “Your image walks not in my common way”

  • “Tho’ lack of laurels and of wreaths not one”

  • “Be still. The Hanging Gardens were a dream”

  • “Live blindly and upon the hour. The Lord”

  • “The melancholy year is dead with rain”

  • from Sonnets from Greece

    • Near Helikon

• Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)

  • Autumn Refrain

• Elinor Wylie (1885–1928)

  • Wild Peaches

  • Unfinished Portrait

  • False Prophet

• John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974)

  • Good Ships

  • Parting at Dawn

  • Piazza Piece

• Conrad Aiken (1889–1973)

  • from And in the Human Heart

    • X. “If we must speak, then let us humbly speak”

    • XXXIX. “Bird’s eye or snake’s eye, bright through leaves; the leaf”

• Claude McKay (1889–1948)

  • Dawn in New York

  • Outcast

• Edna St.Vincent Millay (1892–1950)

  • “If I should learn, in some quite casual way”

  • “I think I should have loved you presently”

  • “I shall forget you presently, my dear”

  • “Love is not blind. I see with single eye”

  • “Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!”

  • Sonnet to Gath

  • from Fatal Interview

    • VII. “Night is my sister, and how deep in love”

    • XXXIII. “Sorrowful dreams remembered after waking”

    • XXXV. “Clearly my ruined garden as it stood”

    • XLVI. “Even in the moment of our earliest kiss”

  • “I too beneath your moon, almighty Sex”

• Samuel Greenberg (1893–1917)

  • from Sonnets of Apology

    • XXVII. Immortality

• E. E. Cummings (1894–1962)

  • “a wind has blown the rain away and blown”

  • “‘next to of course god america i”

  • “if i have made,my lady,intricate”

  • “he does not have to feel because he thinks”

  • “pity this busy monster,manunkind”

  • “why must itself up every of a park”

  • “from spiralling ecstatically this”

  • “all worlds have halfsight,seeing either with”

• H. Phelps Putnam (1894–1948)

  • from On Drink

    • “Strong drink goes to the soul and sets it free”

• Louise Bogan (1897–1970)

  • Sonnet (“Since you would claim the sources of my thought”)

  • Simple Autumnal

  • Single Sonnet

• John Wheelwright (1897–1940)

  • from Mirrors of Venus

    • VII. Sanct

    • XII. Mother

    • XIII. Father

    • XXIX. Phallus

• Léonie Adams (1899–1988)

  • Twilight of the Wood

  • Alas, Kind Element!

• Hart Crane (1899–1932)

  • To Emily Dickinson

• Allen Tate (1899–1979)

  • The Subway 134

  • from Sonnets at Christmas

    • “Ah, Christ, I love you rings to the wild sky”

  • from More Sonnets at Christmas

    • II. “The day’s at end and there’s nowhere to go”

• Yvor Winters (1900–1968)

  • The Prince

• R. P. Blackmur (1904–1965)

  • Phasellus Ille

  • from Dedications

    • II. Wind and Weather

• Richard Eberhart (1904–2005)

  • Burden

• Robert Fitzgerald (1910–1985)

  • Petit Jour

• Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979)

  • Sonnet

• J. V. Cunningham (1911–1985)

  • The Aged Lover Discourses in the Flat Style

• Delmore Schwartz (1913–1966)

  • The Beautiful American Word, Sure

• Karl Shapiro (1913–2000)

  • Christmas Eve: Australia

  • Full Moon: New Guinea

• John Berryman (1914–1972)

  • from Berryman’s Sonnets

    • XI. “I expect you from the North. The path winds in”

• Weldon Kees (1914–1955)

  • To Build a Quiet City in His Mind

• Robert Lowell (1917–1977)

  • The North Sea Undertaker’s Complaint

  • Inauguration Day: January 1953

• William Meredith (1919–2007)

  • The Illiterate

• Howard Nemerov (1920–1991)

  • This Present Past

• Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)

  • A Miltonic Sonnet for Mr. Johnson on His Refusal of Peter Hurd’s Official Portrait

• Anthony Hecht (1923–2004)

  • Fifth Avenue Parade

• Louis Simpson (b. 1923)

  • Summer Storm

• Edgar Bowers (1924–2000)

  • The Virgin Mary

  • The Astronomers of Mont Blanc

• Donald Justice (1925–2004)

  • The Poet at Seven

  • The Artist Orpheus

• James Merrill (1926–1995)

  • Marsyas

  • The Broken Home

• James Wright (1927–1980)

  • Saint Judas

• John Hollander (b. 1929)

  • Jefferson Valley

• Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)

  • The Insusceptibles

• Robert Mezey (b. 1935)

  • Owl