Nineteenth-century poetry can be maudlin and melodramatic—and some of the works in this compilation fit that description—but it is a surpassingly rich, beautiful book. Of the almost 300 poems and excerpts, you have your classics by Shakespeare, Tennyson, Burns, Longfellow, Wordsworth, Byron, et al, but you also have a significant number by names such as Sarah M. B. Piatt, Helen Fiske Hunt, Jean Ingelow, Alice Cary, Dinah Maria Mulock, Elizabeth Akers, and Lucy Larcom.

The themes are what set this book apart: the beauty of life, the certainty of death, the eternality of choices, the will to rise above hatred, despair, and evil. I defy you to read passages like this by Bryant and come away unaffected:

"So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, that moves
To that mysterious realm where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go, not like the quarry slave at night
Scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams."
                                   ("How to Live," p. 244)

Or this by George Herbert:

"Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridall of the earth and skie:
The dew shall weep thy fall to-night,
                               For thou must die.

Sweet rose, whose hue angrie and brave
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye,
Thy root is ever in its grave,
                               And thou must die.

Sweet spring, full of sweet dayes and roses,
A box where sweets compacted lie,
My musick shows ye have your closes,
                               And all must die.

Onely a sweet and virtuous soul,
Like season'd timber, never gives;
But though the whole world turn to coal,
                               Then chiefly lives."
                                       ("Vertue," p. 329)