Treasury of 44 poems recalls British character and attitudes at the height of the Empire. "Gunga Din," "Danny Deever," "If," "The White Man s Burden," many others, reprinted from standard texts. Notes."

Treasury of 44 poems recalls British character and attitudes at the height of the Empire. "Gunga Din," "Danny Deever," "If—," "The White Man’s Burden," many others, reprinted from standard texts. Notes.

The 126 poems in this superb collection of 19th and 20th century British and American verse range from famous poets such as Wordsworth, Tennyson, Whitman, and Frost to less well-known poets. Includes 10 selections from the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

This pocket-sized selection of Rudyard Kipling's verse contains not only this classic, but many of his greatest poems, in testimony to a writer who possessed a precocious gift for rhyme and a brilliant ear for language.

Beloved for his fanciful and engrossing children’s literature, controversial for his enthusiasm for British imperialism, Rudyard Kipling remains one of the most widely read writers of Victorian and modern English literature. In addition to writing more than two dozen works of fiction, including Kim and The Jungle Book, Kipling was a prolific poet, composing verse in every classical form from the epigram to the ode. Kipling’s most distinctive gift was for ballads and narrative poems in which he drew vivid characters in universal situations, articulating profound truths in plain language. Yet he was also a subtle, affecting anatomist of the human heart, and his deep feeling for the natural world was exquisitely expressed in his verse. He was shattered by World War I, in which he lost his only son, and his work darkened in later years but never lost its extraordinary vitality. All of these aspects of Kipling’s poetry are represented in this selection, which ranges from such well-known compositions as “Mandalay” and “If” to the less-familiar, emotionally powerful, and personal epigrams he wrote in response to the war.

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) is often regarded as the unofficial Laureate of the British Empire. Yet his writing reveals a ferociously independent figure at times violently opposed to the dominant political and literary tendencies of his age. Arranged in chronological order, this diverse selection of his poetry shows the development of Kipling's talent, his deepening maturity and the growing sombreness of his poetic vision. Ranging from early, exhilarating celebrations of British expansion overseas, including 'Mandalay' and 'Gunga Din', to the dignified and inspirational 'If -' and the later, deeply moving 'Epitaphs of the War' - inspired by the death of Kipling's only son - it clearly illustrates the scope and originality of his work. It also offers a compelling insight into the Empire both at its peak and during its decline in the early years of the twentieth century.

Compact anthology features many of the best works by 59 poets writing in English, among them Edmund Spenser, Christina Rossetti, John Milton, Robert Burns, and William Blake.