Poems: Lyrical, Affective, and Dramatic

Poems: Lyrical, Affective, And Dramatic by John Combe. This nineteenth-century collection fuses lyric, narrative, and dramatic verse, presenting a meditation on art, love, faith, and mortality. The volume begins with Verses to the Memory of the late Thomas Hood, followed by Biographic Narrative and the multipart Passion’s Progress, which traces the arc of a poet’s life through stages of aspiration, love, loss, spiritual struggle, and renunciation. It also includes the narrative poem The Fate of Claribel, a three-cantos epic about Julian, Claribel, and Rhoda, exploring love’s trials, marriage, illness, and death, as well as The Battle of the Bridges, a dramatic fantasia featuring Britannia and aerial powers against industrial menace. Throughout, the poems examine the poet’s vocation, the burdens and consolations of passion, nature, time, and faith, culminating in visions of universal nature and cosmic order. It was originally published in 1856.