Ballads of Bravery

These are the poems your grandparents read when they believed bravery could save you. Collected in 1877, this anthology gathers the kinds of verses that made people weep in railway stations and recite from memory around campfires. Here is the famous "Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight," the story of a young woman who climbs a tower through darkness to prevent a bell from tolling her lover's death a familiar, desperate tale of love outwitting authority. Here too are the battles of Bunker Hill rendered in rolling couplets, and a sailor's loyalty tested against a shipwreck's fury. The poets are unknown, but their voices carry the weight of an era that still believed courage was the highest calling. This is Victorian sentiment at its purest: tearful, impassioned, unashamed of its own emotion. For readers who want poetry that doesn't ask permission to feel.