2 h 42 minAudiobook13 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 2 h 42 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
Love, grief, and birdsong share a quiet home in these short poems of the heart and the English countryside.
Victorian Songs: Lyrics of the Affections and Nature gathers English lyric poems around two great subjects: human feeling and the natural world. Editor Edmund H. Garrett brings together verses of romantic love, family, friendship, memory, and mourning. These are short encounters with feelings that reach beyond any single life.
Alongside the affections come meadows, hedgerows, streams, woods, and gardens. Birds, flowers, and changing seasons bring the English countryside close. Regular rhythm, rhyme, and recurring stanza patterns give many of these poems their musical shape. Read slowly, they offer a gentle way into Victorian verse, with room to notice both the words and the feelings they carry.
What you’ll discover
- Love in many forms Explore romantic feeling alongside the quieter ties of family, home, and friendship.
- Room for grief Find poems that give memory and mourning a place beside affection and love.
- The countryside close up Pause among fields, lanes, birds, and flowers as the poems turn toward nature.
- Music in the lines Read aloud to enjoy the regular rhythms and rhymes that shape many selections.
- A gentle first encounter Meet Victorian lyric poetry through short pieces, each offering a manageable place to begin.
Who will love it
Readers who love short poems about love, memory, lullabies and the sea will find a home here, as will anyone who likes to read verse aloud and enjoys a good refrain.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Small songs hold everyday feelings
- Memory offers comfort and pain
- Love belongs to particular places
- Singing watches over the sleeper
- The sea carries danger and longing
- Nature keeps count of passing time
- Company answers winter and care
- Repeated sounds turn verse into song
- Small scenes carry the songs forward
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- Hardcover
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- Large print hardcover
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Victorian Songs: Lyrics of the Affections and Nature
A thrush sings all June among the lime trees while a poet listens, in songs of love, loss and the sea.
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In short
Picture a thrush that sings all through June among the lime trees, hidden in the leaves, while a poet below wonders if the bird is teaching him a lesson. That small scene sits in My Thrush, one of about a hundred short poems in Victorian Songs: Lyrics of the Affections and Nature.
Victorian Songs: Lyrics of the Affections and Nature at a glance
- Reading time
- About 1 h 30 min1 h 10 min fast, 1 h 50 min slow
- Length
- 21,500 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A song can be short and still last
The collection begins by telling the listener how to take what follows. Its epigraphs come from Tennyson, Barry Cornwall and Edmund Gosse, and together they set a modest aim. The poems do not build a grand argument. They want to be like a flower, which blooms fast, or like an air, which fades before the ear can hold it.
That aim shapes every page. Most poems run to a few short verses, and many bring back a refrain at the end of each one. A reader can pass from a lullaby to a ship song to a drinking song in a few minutes. The mood changes with every title, and that variety is part of the pleasure.
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Which edition is right for me
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 13 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- Language
- English
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Victorian Songs: Lyrics of the Affections and Nature. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/victorian-songs-lyrics-of-the-affections-and-nature.
Victorian songs: Lyrics of the affections and nature. (2026). Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/victorian-songs-lyrics-of-the-affections-and-nature
Victorian Songs: Lyrics of the Affections and Nature. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/victorian-songs-lyrics-of-the-affections-and-nature.
@book{anonymous2026victorian,
title = {Victorian Songs: Lyrics of the Affections and Nature},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/victorian-songs-lyrics-of-the-affections-and-nature}
}
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What is Victorian Songs: Lyrics of the Affections and Nature about?
It is an anthology of about a hundred short poems from the Victorian age. They cover love, grief, memory, lullabies, the sea, the seasons and the English countryside, with a few party songs and comic pieces among them.
Which poets are in Victorian Songs?
The book includes Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Swinburne, Thomas Hood, Charles Kingsley, Charles Dickens and Thackeray. It also gives space to lesser-known writers such as Jean Ingelow, Mortimer Collins, Lady Dufferin and Austin Dobson.
Were these poems written to be sung?
Many were. Several carry notes saying they were set to music, and the form shows it, with short verses, refrains and titles such as Serenade, Cradle Song, Glee and Drinking Song. Reading them aloud brings out their rhythm.
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