Christopher Nield

Matthew's Arnold's haunting poem, “The Buried Life,” describes our yearning to know our own heart.

This drama of reading is beautifully conveyed in Percy Shelley's short lyric, taken from his play Prometheus Unbound.

In the beginning was the Word. Or should that be Music? In Dryden's song, it is the power ...

How many of us long for an epiphany—some flash of insight to redeem the dull succession of identical ...

The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; ...

To His Watch, When He Could Not Sleep Edward, Lord Herbert of CherburyUncessant Minutes, whilst you move you ...

A reading of ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.'

This poem describes perhaps one of the greatest and most excruciating delights in life: watching people dance badly.

In Whitman’s poem we stare out of an ordinary barnyard door and the view is breathtaking and sublime.

Inspired by Chesterton’s poem, it is up to us to imagine his plain voice of wonder and his ...

The war drum is pounding. Does it ever stop? The drum pounded for John Scott and it pounds ...

One face looks out from all his canvasses, One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans;

Today, when we turn to read Pope’s “An Essay on Man,” the debate between religion and reason rages ...

The moment we start reading this poem by Robert Louis Stevenson, we plunge into the joy of pure ...

The poet Robert Bridges, wrote this lovely poem describing the wonder of fresh snow in the streets of ...

Matthew Arnold paints a marvelous scene, full of sharp details that leap into life before our minds' eyes.

In this sonnet Oscar Wilde addresses his friend, the Victorian actor Sir Henry Irving, cautioning him not to ...

Can we ever really know the meaning of our words?

Mystery and wonder are at the very root of human existence. Without them, our lives would be barren.

One of poetry's great powers is to remind us of the obvious, while we distract ourselves with the ...

What is the secret to happiness? ... For Sir Henry Wotton, happiness equals freedom—a freedom that exists somewhere ...

In this poem John Keats finds "Elysium," or heaven, in the local bar...

Have you ever undergone a conversion experience? One where, in a sudden flash, you fundamentally changed your perspective? ...

What is our response to death? Not in the abstract but in the horribly, humiliatingly particular? What is ...

Good and bad, right and wrong. Without these basic moral distinctions, what kind of life could we lead?

When is a clock not a clock?...