LYRICAL, TOUCHING & STARTLING POEMS

I've taken my English Literature books back from their shelves for a while and looked for three poems. I wanted to find something lyrical, something touching and something startling among the poems studied in the last five years. After an hour of leafing through pages more or less familiar, depending on the time devoted to their study, here is my selection:

Lyrical...
THE LADY OF SHALLOTT by Alfred Tennison

 On either side the river lie

Long fields of barley and of rye,

That clothe the wold and meet the sky;

And thro' the field the road runs by

To many-tower'd Camelot;

And up and down the people go,

Gazing where the lilies blow

Round an island there below,

The island of Shalott. ...

(whole text)

... touching...

DULCE ET DECORUM EST by Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind,
Drunck with fatigue, deaf even to the hoots
Of gas shells dropping softly behind.
...

(whole text)

...and startling.
THIS BE THE VERSE by Philip Larkin