I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud: And Other Poems You Half-Remember from School [Hardcover]

"Once you dip in and start you won't be able to stop" --Tribune, 13 November 2009

"If you have a favourite poem you'll probably find it in I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, which contains some of the nation's best-loved offerings. Famous names includes Shakespeare, Shelley, Wordsworth and Wilfred Owen. The book also contains lots of interesting facts about poets and there's an index to help you search by a poem's most famous line" --Co-Operative Magazine, November 2009

"This is an excellent collection of all those poems that you perhaps only half remember. Not only are there some of the most important poems in the language, but also potted biographies and an index of famous lines for those post-prandial 'guess the poem' quizzes. The perfect stocking filler." --Choice, December issue 2009

"Sampson's enlightening collection offers a wide variety of poems, each enhanced by background material that lends useful context. From Shakespeare to Shelley, Blake to Brooke, anyone who loves poetry or appreciates the inherent richness of the English language will find much to relish." --Good Book Guide, November 2009

Do you remember the famous opening lines, 'Tyger tyger, burning bright'? Or 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?' But would you be able to name the poems or the poets? The English language is jam-packed with wonderful verses that we've all heard at some point, but probably forgotten. "I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud" will remind you of all those long-forgotten poems that you were taught at school, together with mini-biographies and introductions. This title includes: "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" - Coleridge; "If" - Rudyard Kipling; "Dulce et Decorum Est" - Wilfred Owen; "Song of Myself" - Walt Whitman; "Digging" - Seamus Heaney; and "Not Waving But Drowning" - Stevie Smith. Complete with an index of famous lines as well as authors, any poetry enthusiast will love the collection of best-loved poems alongside the lively commentary. "I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud", is a perfect addition to any poetry lover's collection.

In the best-selling I Before E (Except after C) series, this book revisits all the poems you half-remember.

I do not presume to provide a comprehensive overview of poetry in English in this book, or to present a roll call of the finest, or the most seminal, verse. Rather, I hope to take a nostalgic tour of the poems that run through our consciousness: the half-remembered lines and phrases from school-days, as well as the poems and fragments of poems that we find - sometimes to our own surprise - that we can recite. If anyone tells you that they don't know any poetry - and many happily told me just that - ask them whether the following phrases are familiar: 'the darling buds of may'; 'no country for old men'; 'Laugh, and the world laughs with you'; 'They fuck you up, your mum and dad'; 'the Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea.' The wonderful thing about poetry is that we know poetry we don't know we know, if I may put it so confusingly.

Often we don't know that we are familiar with, say, Robert Herrick's To The Virgins, To Make Much of Time until we hear the first line: 'Gather ye rosebuds while we may.' Sometimes it's just a line in the middle of a poem that catches in the memory: 'water, water every where / Nor any drop to drink' from Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, or 'To morrow to fresh Woods, and Pastures new' from Milton's Lycidas. So I include here a unique index of the most famous lines from poems, whether or not they are the opening lines, so that you can find `the one that goes...'

Early on, I realised uneasily what a subjective selection this would have to be. The poetry that we know depends on our teachers' whims, our parents' tastes, the misery or otherwise of our teenage years, our age and sometimes our gender, so it is impossible to include everyone's favourites here. I apologise wholeheartedly if long cherished poems do not appear, but I hope perhaps that this collection might inspire you to seek them out elsewhere. As many people as possible were consulted - just ask my poor colleagues and family - to compile a list that would ring bells with the widest readership, and this has led to some surprising omissions. I could find almost nobody, for example, who could quote any Dryden, so the first Poet Laureate is not represented here despite his importance to the story of poetry.

Thematically ordering the poems was impossible, because part of the fun is that a poem rarely speaks to us about a solitary subject. Donne, for example, talks about a flea at the same time as lecturing his too-chaste lover about withholding her evidently considerable charms. Lawrence has an altercation with a snake, and somehow we are plunged into thoughts of lost Eden. So, I have elected to place the poets in chronological order, which has thrown up its own odd pleasures as Wilfred Owen, mired in tragedy, is followed by Dorothy Parker rakishly cradling her martini.

Poring over anthologies has been ridiculously good fun, but I found myself greedy for more than the poems. I wanted to remind myself whether a poet had been up to no good with his sister, or whether the poem was inspired by a spat with another writer. Was this verse dedicated to a flesh and blood lover? Did readers at the time flock to buy it in their droves, or think it was avant-garde nonsense? I've had a whale of a time finding all this out and it has added immeasurably to my pleasure in the poems. It has also almost certainly upped my chances in pub quizzes. I hope you have as much fun as I have along the way.

We are, it's said, a nation of poetry-lovers. Our language is peppered with half-remembered quotations and well-worn phrases from much-loved poems. Except that too often we can't recall how the rest of the poem goes. Or the author's name. Or the first line...
From Chaucer to Shakespeare, Wordsworth to Keats, Burns to Yeats, Brooke to Auden and Larkin to Cope, this wide-ranging collection encompasses the poems you may have learned once and others that have given lines or sayings to our everyday speech. With a masterly index that allows readers to search not just by first lines, but by well-known phrases, here is a book for anyone who loves the language and its incomparable poetic heritage.