"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"

William Cowper (1731-1800)

William Cowper (1731-1800), pronounced "cooper," was an popular English poet and hymnodist. His focus as a poet on the everyday life of the English countryside influenced the early Romantics. He famously suffered from severe depression. He was also a zealous evangelical Christian.

Cowper also translated Homer into blank verse--don't confuse him with Chapman.

On the GRE Literature exam, you're mostly likely to need to identify the following Cowper quotes:

1. "variety's the very spice of life"
2. "God made the country, and man the town"
3. "God moves in a mysterious way / His wonders to perform"

Cowper is not worth adding to your GRE reading list.

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) was a German poet and prose stylist, often considered the most important German poet of the 20th century.

One of the following works may appear on the GRE Literature exam. Read each linked summary once; read "Der Panther" twice.

1. Letters to a Young Poet

2. The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (Novel)

3. "Der Panther" (Translation)

Rilke is not worth adding to your GRE reading list.

"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).

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was a major English Romantic poet. His Lyrical Ballads, published with Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1798, is widely credited with launching the Romantic movement in England.

He famously sought to write poetry in "the real language of men," and defined poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings from emotions recollected in tranquility."

Wordsworth is a major figure on the GRE Literature exam.

1. "It is a Beauteous Evening (Calm and Free)"

2. "My heart leaps up (when I behold)"

3. "The world is too much with us"
-loosely follows the form of an Italian sonnet

4. "Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey"
-Part of the Lyrical Ballads
(link goes to separate entry)

5. The "Lucy" poems
-Part of the Lyrical Ballads
(link goes to separate entry)

6. The Prelude
(link goes to separate entry)

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).

Lord Byron (1788-1824)

George Gordon Byron (1788-1824) was an English Romantic poet. Despite his literary celebrity, Byron is not a major figure on the GRE. He's as famous for his tumultuous lifestyle--and for his namesake brooding "Byronic hero"--as he is for his poetry. He died of a fever while fighting for (oddly enough) Greek independence from the Ottomans.

For the GRE Literature exam, associate the following with Byron.

1. "She Walks in Beauty"

2. Manfred (dramatic poem)
-Part of a ghost story craze; based on the Faust legend

3. Childe Harold's Pilgrimages (narrative poem)
-about masculinity; protagonist is typical Byronic hero
-four of the cantos are written in Spenserian stanzas

4. Don Juan (narrative poem)
-identifiable by its distinctive rhyme scheme: ab ab ab cc (link)

Byron is not worth adding to your GRE Literature reading list.

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"