Poetry Codex

Romantic

Henry Kirke White

1785–1806

Henry Kirke White (1785–1806) was born in Nottingham, the son of a butcher, and was put to work early in a stocking-loom and then a lawyer's office while he taught himself languages and wrote verse. His first volume, Clifton Grove (1803), won him the notice of Robert Southey, and with the help of patrons he went up to St John's College, Cambridge, to study for the church.

Overwork and the strain of competing for university honours broke his health, and he died of consumption at Cambridge at the age of twenty-one. Southey edited his Remains (1807), and Lord Byron's lines on his early death in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers made his name widely known. The poems here follow the Poetical Works with a memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas.

Poems (108)

  1. Clifton Grove
  2. Time
  3. Childhood
  4. The Christiad
  5. Lines Written on a Survey of the Heavens
  6. Lines Supposed to Be Spoken by a Lover at the Grave of His Mistress
  7. My Study
  8. Description of a Summer's Eve
  9. Lines: Go to the raging sea, and say, "Be still!"
  10. Written in the Prospect of Death
  11. Verses: When pride and envy, and the scorn
  12. Fragment: Oh! thou most fatal of Pandora's train
  13. Fragment: Loud rage the winds without.--The wintry cloud
  14. To a Friend in Distress
  15. Christmas Day
  16. Nelsoni Mors
  17. Epigram on Robert Bloomfield
  18. Elegy Occasioned by the Death of Mr. Gill, Who Was Drowned in the River Trent, While Bathing
  19. Inscription for a Monument to the Memory of Cowper
  20. I'm pleased, and yet I'm sad
  21. Solitude
  22. If far from me the Fates remove
  23. Fanny! upon thy breast I may not lie!
  24. Fragment: Saw'st thou that light? exclaim'd the youth, and paused
  25. Fragment: The pious man
  26. Fragment: Lo! on the eastern summit, clad in gray
  27. Fragment: There was a little bird upon that pile
  28. Fragment: O pale art thou, my lamp, and faint
  29. Fragment: O give me music--for my soul doth faint
  30. Fragment: And must thou go, and must we part?
  31. Fragment: Ah! who can say, however fair his view
  32. Fragment: Hush'd is the lyre--the hand that swept
  33. Fragment: When high romance o'er every wood and stream
  34. Fragment: Once more, and yet once more
  35. Fragment of an Eccentric Drama
  36. To a Friend
  37. Lines on Reading the Poems of Warton
  38. Fragment: The western gale
  39. Commencement of a Poem on Despair
  40. The Eve of Death
  41. Thanatos
  42. Athanatos
  43. Music
  44. On Being Confined to School One Pleasant Morning in Spring
  45. To Contemplation
  46. My Own Character
  47. Lines Written in Wilford Churchyard
  48. Verses: Thou base repiner at another's joy
  49. Lines: Yes, my stray steps have wander'd, wander'd far
  50. The Prostitute
  51. To My Lyre
  52. To an Early Primrose
  53. Ode Addressed to H. Fuseli, Esq. R. A.
  54. To the Earl of Carlisle, K. G.
  55. To Contemplation
  56. To the Genius of Romance
  57. To Midnight
  58. To Thought
  59. Genius
  60. Fragment of an Ode to the Moon
  61. To the Muse
  62. To Love
  63. On Whit-Monday
  64. To the Wind, at Midnight
  65. To the Harvest Moon
  66. To the Herb Rosemary
  67. To the Morning
  68. On Disappointment
  69. On the Death of Dermody the Poet
  70. To the River Trent
  71. Sonnet: Give me a cottage on some Cambrian wild
  72. Sonnet Supposed to Have Been Addressed by a Female Lunatic to a Lady
  73. Sonnet Supposed to Be Written by the Unhappy Poet Dermody in a Storm
  74. The Winter Traveller
  75. Recantatory, in Reply to the Foregoing Elegant Admonition
  76. On Hearing the Sounds of an Æolian Harp
  77. Sonnet: What art thou, Mighty One! and where thy seat?
  78. To Capel Lofft, Esq.
  79. To the Moon
  80. Written at the Grave of a Friend
  81. To Misfortune
  82. Sonnet: As thus oppress'd with many a heavy care
  83. To April
  84. Sonnet: Ye unseen spirits, whose wild melodies
  85. To a Taper
  86. To My Mother
  87. Sonnet: Yes, 't will be over soon. This sickly dream
  88. To Consumption
  89. Sonnet: Thy judgments, Lord, are just
  90. Sonnet: When I sit musing on the chequer'd past
  91. Sonnet: Sweet to the gay of heart is Summer's smile
  92. Sonnet: Quick o'er the wintry waste dart fiery shafts
  93. Gondoline
  94. A Ballad: Be hush'd, be hush'd, ye bitter winds
  95. The Lullaby of a Female Convict to Her Child, the Night Previous to Execution
  96. The Savoyard's Return
  97. A Pastoral Song
  98. Melody: Yes, once more that dying strain
  99. Additional Stanza to a Song by Waller
  100. The Wandering Boy
  101. Canzonet: Maiden! wrap thy mantle round thee
  102. Song: Softly, softly blow, ye breezes
  103. The Shipwrecked Solitary's Song to the Night
  104. The Wonderful Juggler
  105. Hymn: Awake, sweet harp of Judah, wake
  106. A Hymn for Family Worship
  107. The Star of Bethlehem
  108. Hymn: O Lord, my God, in mercy turn

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