Classic poetry

Lyrical Ballads

by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Wordsworth and Coleridge's landmark collection brings supernatural ballads, rural encounters, childhood memory, suffering, and ordinary speech into a new poetic program. Coleridge contributes the dreamlike terror of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” while Wordsworth repeatedly finds moral and imaginative significance in humble lives and remembered landscapes. The famous prefaces attached to later editions argue that poetry can use the language of common people while revealing the mind's transforming power. Foundational and varied, this book suits readers interested in Romanticism, nature, experimental simplicity, eerie storytelling, and the moment English poetry deliberately changed its direction.