**“On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer”

MUCH have I travell’d in the realms of gold,      And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;      Round many western islands have I been    Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.    Oft of one wide expanse had I been told 5      That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;      Yet did I never breathe its pure serene    Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:    Then felt I like some watcher of the skies      When a new planet swims into his ken; 10    Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes      He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men    Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—      Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

“Ode to Autumn”

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run; To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease; For Summer has o'erbrimm'd their clammy cells. Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers: And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook; Or by a cyder-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours. Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,— While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river-sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft; And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

You definitely want to familiarzie yourself with "Ozymandias" and "To a Skylark" as well as Prometheus Unbound. A biography can be found here.

"Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats”

This is a long work written in Spensarian stanzas.  It begins:

I I weep for Adonais--he is dead! Oh, weep for Adonais! though our tears Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head! And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers, And teach them thine own sorrow, say: "With me Died Adonais; till the Future dares Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be An echo and a light unto eternity!"

II Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay, When thy Son lay, pierc'd by the shaft which flies In darkness? where was lorn Urania When Adonais died? With veiled eyes, 'Mid listening Echoes, in her Paradise She sate, while one, with soft enamour'd breath, Rekindled all the fading melodies, With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath, He had adorn'd and hid the coming bulk of Death.