All The Poetry Recited In Penny Dreadful

all the poetry recited in penny dreadful

which no one asked for, but i listed, because i’m too dedicated to the aesthetic and i like to waste my time. i most certainly could have missed some, so, you know. please note that the last entry is different from its earlier recitation.

season 1

episode 2, vanessa and victor together: “if this belief from heaven be sent, / if such be nature’s holy plan, / have i not reason to lament / what man has made from man?” - wordsworth, “lines written in early spring”

episode 3, victor: “there was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, / the earth, and every common sight, / to me did seem / apparell’d in celestial light, / the glory and the freshness of a dream. / it is not now as it hath been of yore; - / turn wheresoe’er i may, / by night or day, / the things which i have seen i now can see no more.” - wordsworth, “ode on intimations of immortality from recollections of early childhood”

episode 5, sir malcolm as the devil: “darkling i listen; and, for many a time / i have been half in love with easeful death, / call’d him soft names in many a musèd rhyme, / to take into the air my quiet breath.” - keats, “ode to a nightingale”

episode 6, victor: “no more let life divide what death can join together.” - shelley, “adonais”

episode 7, vanessa repeats the shelley line to victor; ethan as the devil repeats the keats line

episode 8, caliban: “o fleeting joys / of paradise, dear bought with lasting woes! / did i request thee, maker, from my clay / to mould me man?” - milton, paradise lost

season 2

episode 2, john clare: “to see a world in a grain of sand / and a heaven in a wild flower / hold infinity in the palm of your hand / and eternity in an hour.” - william blake, “auguries of innocence”

episode 3, the cutwitch: “by the pricking of my thumbs, / something wicked this way comes.” - shakespeare, macbeth (not really poetry, i know, but i still had to include it)

episode 5, vanessa and john clare: “i am–yet what i am none cares or knows; / my friends forsake me like a memory lost; / i am the self-consumer of my woes– / they rise and vanish in oblivious host, / like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes / and yet i am, and live–like vapours tossed…i long for scenes where man hath never trod / a place where woman never smiled or wept / there to abide with my creator, god, / and sleep as i in childhood sweetly slept, / untroubling and untroubled where i lie / the grass below–above the vaulted sky.” - john clare, “i am!”

season 3

episode 1, mr. lyle: “i hold it true…‘tis better to have loved and lost / than never to have loved at all.” - tennyson, “in memoriam a.h.h”

episode 1, vanessa: “beat, happy stars, timing with things below, / beat with my heart more blest than heart can tell, / blest, but for some dark undercurrent woe / that seems to draw–but it shall not be so; / let all be well, be well.” - tennyson, “maud”

episode 4, john clare: “i have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, / and what can be the use of him is more than i can see. / he is very, very like me from the heels up to the head; / and i see him jump before me, when i jump into my bed.” - robert louis stevenson, “my shadow”

episode 4, john clare: “i can never get back by day, / nor can remember plain and clear / the curious music that i hear.” - robert louis stevenson, “the land of nod”

episode 7, vanessa: “i have made my bed / in charnels and on coffins, where black death / keeps record of the trophies won…” - shelley, “alastor; or, the spirit of solitude”

episode 9, john clare: “there was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, / the earth, and every common sight, / to me did seem / apparell’d in celestial light, / the glory and the freshness of a dream…but there’s a tree, of many, one, / a single field which i have looked upon, / both of them speak of something that is gone; / the pansy at my feet / doth the same tale repeat: / whither is fled the visionary gleam? / where is it now, the glory and the dream?” - wordsworth, “ode on intimations of immortality from recollections of early childhood”