Selected Poems: For Required Reading in Secondary Schools

Excerpt from Selected Poems: For Required Reading in Secondary Schools
These seven poems represent fairly well the poetry of the early and middle nineteenth century. They are here printed in the order of their original publication. Excepting The Ancient Mariner, they all appeared within the quarter-century between 1840 and 1865. It was in just this period, too, that Tennyson and Browning wrote their best poems.
But between 1798 and 1842 another great group, or rather series, of poets had earned a just and lasting fame. Coleridge is their only direct representative in this book. The others were Wordsworth and Keats and Shelley and Byron and Scott; and they are all indirectly represented here, for they left their stamp on the poetry that followed, and indeed on all poetry that has been written since. Wordsworth has special claim to mention here. He was joint author of the Lyrical Ballads, in which The Ancient Mariner appeared, and which marked a step in the development of English poetry.