"Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard" (1751)

Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard" (1751) was an immensely popular meditation on mortality that had a major influence on the early Romantics. The work has led Thomas Gray to be classified among the pre-Romantic Graveyard Poets.

"Elegy" is almost guaranteed to show up on the GRE Literature exam. Read this full text at least three times.

The poem is in four-line stanzas (ABAB), iambic pentameter.

Associate the following quotes with "Elegy:"

1. "Some mute, inglorious Milton here may rest / Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood."

2. "The paths of glory lead but to the grave."

3. "Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife"

"Tintern Abbey" (1798)

William Wordsworth's "Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey" (1798) is one of the major early texts of the Romantic movement.

It is a textbook example of Wordsworth's definition of poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings from emotions recollected in tranquility."

This poem is almost guaranteed to appear on the GRE Literature exam. You should read the full text (Wikisource) of the poem at least twice before the exam.

The Lucy poems (1789-1801)

William Wordsworth's Lucy poems (1789-1801) are five short lyrics originally published in the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads alongside the work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

The Lucy poems were central in establishing the early popularity of Romantic poetry, and one or more is almost guaranteed to appear on the GRE Literature exam. It's almost worth memorizing them. (Luckily, each mentions Lucy at or near the end.)

1. "Strange fits of passion I have known"
2. "She dwelt among the untrodden ways"
3. "I travelled among unknown men"
4. "Three years she grew in sun and shower"
5. "A slumber did my spirit seal"

The Prelude (1805, 1850)

William Wordsworth's The Prelude, aka the "Poem to Coleridge," is one of the major works of English Romanticism.

It exists in three versions, of which the unpolished, radical 1805 version and the posthumous 1850 version are the most commonly used for modern publications. (The 1799 version is much shorter.)

The poem, written entirely in blank verse, is a kind of "spiritual autobiography" (Wikipedia).

Famous passages include:

1. Opening journey to the Vale of Grasmere
2. Crossing of the Alps near Mont Blanc in Book VI
3. Climactic ascent of Snowdon in Wales

The poem is important in that it considers man's own mind, as opposed to history or the will of (the) god(s), a worthy subject of an epic.

The Prelude may be worth adding to your GRE reading list, but not as a high priority. I recommend William Wordsworth - The Major Works (Oxford World's Classics).

A.E. Housman (1859-1936)

Alfred Edward Housman (1859-1936) was an English poet whose most famous work was completed in the late 19th century. His melancholy, bucolic poem cycle A Shropshire Lad was extremely popular in the years before and after World War I, and was frequently set to music.

For the GRE Literature exam, associate the following works with Housman. Read each linked poem at least once.

1. "When I was one-and-twenty"
2. "To an athlete dying young"
3. "Terence, this is stupid stuff"

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Walt Whitman (1819-1892) was an American poet. He was a major innovator in the use of free verse. Politically, he was a strong supporter of abolition. Some of his work was unusually sexual for his time.

For the GRE Literature exam, associate the following works with Walt Whitman. Read each linked poem at least once.

1. Leaves of Grass
-Grew with each new edition published during his lifetime

2. "Song of Myself"

3. "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd"
-A poem about Lincoln's assassination

4. "O Captain, My Captain"
-Another poem about Lincoln's assassination

5. "Pioneers! O Pioneers"

6. "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer"

"Ulysses" (poem)

"Ulysses" (1833, pub. 1842) is a dramatic monologue by the Victorian poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson. It is almost guaranteed to appear on the GRE Literature exam.

For the test, know that Ulysses serves as a kind of epilogue to Homer's Odyssey. The poem takes place three years after Odysseus returns to Ithaca, at which point Odysseus begins to yearn for adventure again, though he doubts his strength in his old age.

You should know the following lines well:

"It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me."

"Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods."

"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) was an English Victorian poet and one of the most popular English poets of all time. Example of his work, often identifiable by its classical and Arthurian influences, are almost guaranteed to show up on the GRE Literature test.

For the test, associate the following works with Tennyson. For In Memoriam A.H.H, a summary and an excerpt will suffice; poems in bold should be read multiple times before the exam.

1. "Ulysses"
-An imagined epilogue to Homer's Odyssey; in blank verse
2. "Break, break, break"
3. "The Lotos-Eaters"
-Spenserian stanzas; an episode from Homer's Odyssey
4. In Memoriam A.H.H.
-The "In Memoriam" stanza: ABBA iambic tetrameter
5. "The Lady of Shalott"
-Arthurian
6. "Mariana"
7. "The Charge of the Light Brigade"
-Probably his most popular, but unlikely to appear on the exam.

"To His Coy Mistress" (1681)

"To His Coy Mistress" (1681), by Metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell (1621-1678), is almost guaranteed to appear on the GRE Literature exam.

The poem, an injunction to the speaker's mistress to forfeit her virginity in light of the couple's mortality, is often interpreted as a parody of the Cavalier style, marked as such by its metaphysical themes.

The poem is written in iambic tetrameter couplets.

Know the following by memory:

"But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity."

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1722-1834)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1722-1834) was a major British Romantic poet and a close friend of William Wordsworth. He and Wordsworth are both considered "Lake Poets."

For the GRE Literature exam, associate the following works with Coleridge. Works in bold should be read twice. For the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and the Biographia Literaria, a summary will suffice.

1. "Frost at Midnight"
2. "On Donne's Poetry"
3. "Kubla Khan"
4. "Rime of the Ancient Mariner"
-In ballad stanzas.
5. Biographia Literaria

"My Last Duchess"

"My Last Duchess" is a dramatic monologue in 28 heroic couplets by the Victorian poet Robert Browning (1812-1889). Browning was particularly renowned for dramatic verse.

In the poem, the speaker, an Italian duke, describes a portrait of his last wife, whom he may or may not have had murdered. His audience is there to negotiate a new marriage for the duke. (Wikipedia summary here.)

This poem is almost guaranteed to appear on the GRE Literature test--read it multiple times. Know the famous lines below by heart:

-"She had a heart--how shall I say?--too soon made glad"
-"I gave commands; then all smiles stopped together"

"To the memory of my beloved master, William Shakespeare"

"To the memory of my beloved master, William Shakespeare," by Ben Jonson (1623)

Written in heroic couplets. Thick with comparisons to prominent poets, especially classical.

The source of many famous quotes on Shakespeare:
-"He was not of an age, but for all time"
-"Soul of the age"
-"Thou art a monument without a tomb"
-"For a good poet's made, as well as born"
-"Sweet Swan of Avon"

*This poem is an ETS favorite. Read it several times before the exam.