Any attempt at anthologising poetry will always be open to critique, particularly when the anthologiser pretends to choose the “best” poems ever written. Questions such as “How can such and such a poem not be included?”, “Why is that period not represented?”, “Where are all the women?” are therefore to be expected and I can only address them by explaining that the authors and poems listed below were chosen through the lens of my own taste and experience and that when read, I found something of worth in them.
With all that said, I want to make it clear that I am not an aesthetic relativist and firmly believe in the absolute quality of every single poem included here.
So what is the goal of this anthology and in the end, of this website as a whole? If nothing else, then this: that it will simply act as a roadmap through the poetic landscape of the English language. There are many lanes and byways that are not charted on it and I hope that the inquisitive reader, traversing some of the more clearly-beaten paths, will feel inspired to take those turns and see where they end up taking him or her.
The poems in the lists are accessed by clicking on the respective authors’ names and scrolling through the page. If you find any inconsistencies or mistakes, please let me know by writing an email to [email protected] so I can correct them
Enjoy!
- Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight
- An ABC (The Prayer of Our Lady)
- Rondel
- Virelai
- Words unto Adam his Scrivener
- Balade de Bon Conseyl
- Canterbury Tales
- Troilus and Criseyde
- The Book of the Duchess
- Lament for the Makars
- On the Nativity of Christ
- Though ye suppose all jeopardies are past
- Upon a Dead Man’s Head
- Tom O’ Bedlam’s Song
- Whoso list to hunt
- They flee from me
- My lute awake
- The pillar perish’d
- He Renounceth All the Effects of Love
- The Aged Lover Renounceth Love
- So Cruel Prison
- The Lullaby of a Lover
- And if I Did, What Then?
- Amoretti LXXV: One Day I Wrote Her Name
- The Faerie Queen
- The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd
- Epitaph
- Farewell to the Court
- Conceit Begotten by the Eyes
- Nature, That Washed Her Hands in Milk
- The Lie
- The Sun May Set and Rise
- Caelica 7: The world, that all contains
- Caelica 83: You that seek what life is in death
- Psalm 19
- Psalm 23
- Psalm 91
- Psalm 139
- Ecclesiastes
- The Song of Solomon
- The Book of Job
- The Sermon on the Mount
- 1 Corinthians 13
- A Guiltless Heart
- Life
Chidiock Tichborne (1562-1586)
- Elegy
- To the Virginian Voyage
- Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part
Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)
- The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
- Hero and Leander
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
- Sonnet 3
- Sonnet 12
- Sonnet 15
- Sonnet 18
- Sonnet 29
- Sonnet 30
- Sonnet 53
- Sonnet 64
- Sonnet 65
- Sonnet 104
- In Time of Plague
- A Hymn to God in a Night of My Late Sickness
- Hymn
- Follow Thy Fair Sun
- My Sweetest Lesbia
- The Man of Life Upright
- Now Winter Nights Enlarge
- Upon Platonic Love: To Mistress Cicely Crofts, Maid of Honour
- On Tobacco
- Song: To Celia
- To Celia
- The Noble Nature
- To the Memory of My Beloved the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare
- Hymn to God, My God, in My Sickness
- Song: Go and Catch a Falling Star
- The Flea
- A Hymn to God the Father
- A Hymn to Christ, at the Author’s Last Going into Germany
- The Sun Rising
- The Canonisation
- A Nocturnal upon Saint Lucy’s Day, Being the Shortest Day
- Vanitas Vanitatum
Aurelian Townshend (1583-1649)
- Though Regions Far Divided
- To the Lady May
- On the Tombs in Westminster Abbey
- On the Marriage of a Beauteous Young Gentlewoman with an Ancient Man
- The Thought
- Elegy
- A Meditation upon His Wax Candle Burning Out
- Tears, Flow No More
- To Cynthia
- To Cynthia: On Her Embraces
- To Cynthia: On Her Coyness
- To Cynthia: An Apology
- To Cynthia: On a Parting Kiss
- To Cynthia: On the Concealment of Her Beauty
- To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
- To Daffodils
- The Coming of Good Luck
- The Night Piece, to Julia
- Upon Julia’s Clothes
- Corinna’s Going a Maying
- Sic Vita
- On a Monument
- An Ecstasy
- Virtue
- Easter Wings
- Church Monuments
- The Pearl
- A Rapture
- A Song
- An Elegy upon the Death of the Dean of Saint Paul’s, Doctor John Donne
- A Cruel Mistress
James Paulin (15th-16th century?)
- Love’s Contentment
- Death the Leveller
- Nox Nocti Indicat Scientiam
- Song
- Go, Lovely Rose
- How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth
- On the Late Massacre in Piedmont
- When I consider how my light is spent
- On Shakespeare
- On Time
- At a Solemn Music
- Lycidas
- L’Allegro
- On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity
- Paradise Lost
- Samson Agonistes
- Sonnet: Of thee, kind boy, I ask no red and white
- Before the Birth of One of Her Children
- A Song
- An Epitaph upon Husband and Wife Who Died and Were Buried Together
- Hudibras
Thomas Philipot (ca. 1616-1682)
- On Myself being Sick of a Fever
- To His Coy Mistress
- Call
- A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day
- To the Memory of Mr. Oldham
- Epigram on Milton
- A Song of a Young Lady to Her Ancient Lover
- Upon His Leaving His Mistress
- Impromptu on Charles II
- The Imperfect Enjoyment
- An Ode
- On Stella’s Birth-day
- The Place of the Damned
- Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, D.S.P.D.
- Buxom Joan
- An Essay on Criticism
- Verses from The Dunciad
- The Seasons
- On the Death of Richard West
- Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
- A Comparison
- Light Shining out of Darkness
- The Nightingale and Glow-Worm
- The Castaway
- The Task
- The Newspaper
- The Village
- London
- A Red, Red Rose
- Green Grow the Rashes
- Tam O’ Shanter
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
- Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1802)
- Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour. July 13, 1798
- Surprised by Joy
- Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
- Answer
- The Lay of the Last Minstrel
- The Lady of the Lake
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
- The Eolian Harp
- This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison
- Frost at Midnight
- The Pains of Sleep
- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824)
- The Destruction of Sennacherib
- Stanzas for Music
- January 22nd, Missolonghi
- Don Juan
- Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
- Ozymandias
- With a Guitar—to Jane
- Mont Blanc
- Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude
- The Triumph of Life
- The Nightingale’s Nest
- I Am!
- An Invite to Eternity
William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)
- Thanatopsis
- When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be
- Bright Star, Would I Were Stedfast as Thou Art
- Ode on a Grecian Urn
- Ode to a Nightingale
Jane Johnston Schoolcraft (1800-1842)
- Sweet Willy
Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803-1849)
- Song
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)
- A Musical Instrument
- Aurora Leigh
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
- Snow-flakes
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
- Ulysses
- Tithonus
- From The Princess: Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal
- In Memoriam
- The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
- The Owl and the Pussy-cat
- “How Pleasant to Know Mr. Lear”
- Home Thoughts, from Abroad
- Love among the Ruins
- Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came
Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861)
- Say Not the Struggle Nought Availeth
- As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life
- When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer
- Night on the Prairies
- Song of Myself
Frederick Goddard Tuckerman (1821-1873)
- Sometimes I Walk Where the Deep Water Dips
- Dank Fens of Cedar, Hemlock-branches Gray
- Growing Old
- Dover Beach
- Shakespeare
- Magna Est Veritas
- The Two Deserts
William McGonagall (1825-1902)
- The Tay Bridge Disaster
- I cannot dance upon my Toes
- Because that you are going
- A Bird came down the Walk
- The Tint I cannot take—is best
- Before I got my eye put out
- After great pain, a formal feeling comes
- The saddest noise, the sweetest noise
- Success is counted sweetest
Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)
- A Birthday
- Remember
- When I Am Dead, My Dearest
- The City of Dreadful Night
Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909)
- A Match
- The Garden of Proserpine
- A Sonnet Between Two Seas
- He Never Expected Much
- The Convergence of the Twain
- At Castle Boterel
- A Broken Appointment
- I Look into My Glass
- Drummer Hodge
- Rome at the Pyramid of Cestius, Near the Grave of Shelley and Keats
- In Time of ‘The Breaking of Nations’
- He Resolves to Say No More
- The New Decalogue
- Insectivora
- A Song of Eternity in Time
- Evening Song
Robert Seymour Bridges (1844-1930)
- I Will Not Let Thee Go
- I Have Loved Flowers That Fade
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
- The Windhover
- Binsey Poplars
- God’s Grandeur
- No Worst, There Is None. Pitched Past Pitch of Grief
- I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, Not Day
- Spring
- Pied Beauty
- The Fine Delight that Fathers Thought; the Strong
- Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries
- When I Was One and Twenty
Willam Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
- The Stolen Child
- The Fisherman
- An Irish Airman Foresees His Death
- Easter, 1916
- The Wild Swans at Coole
- Sailing to Byzantium
- Byzantium
- The Second Coming
- Those Images
- The Lamentation of the Old Pensioner
- Sing with the Wind
- April Love
- Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam
Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)
- Luke Havergal
- In Flanders Fields
- November
- The Railway Junction
- Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
- Nothing Gold Can Stay
- Venus Transiens
- Tea at the Palaz of Hoon
- The Man Whose Pharynx Was Bad
- The Snow Man
- The Emperor of Ice Cream
- Not Ideas About the Thing but the Thing Itself
- A Postcard from the Volcano
- Peter Quince at the Clavier
- Of Mere Being
- Sunday Morning
- The Idea of Order at Key West
- Nomad Exquisite
- Stars at Tallapoosa
- Auroras of Autumn
- Reciprocity
Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy (1883-1929)
- Roses in December
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
- Postlude
- Portrait of a Lady
- Queen-Anne’s Lace
- All Our Joy is Enough
James Elroy Flecker (1884-1915)
- Yasmin (A Ghazel)
- Oak and Olive
- I rose from dreamless hours
- Epithalamion
- To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence
- Piano
- Shadows
- Snake
- The Mess of Love
- And the Days Are Not Full Enough
- Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) (1886-1961)
- Helen
- Shine, Perishing Republic
- The Soldier
- The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
- La Figlia Che Piange
- Ash Wednesday
- Returning, We Hear the Larks
- Dead Man’s Dump
- Expression
- Morning Song of Senlin
- Evening Song of Senlin
- Insensibility
- Anthem for a Doomed Youth
- Dulce et Decorum Est
- Strange Meeting
- Spring Offensive
- The End
- Thy fingers make early flowers of
- somewhere I have never travelled,gladly beyond
- i carry your heart with me(I carry it in
- O sweet spontaneous
- The Eagle
John Brooks Wheelwright (1897-1940)
- Fish Food (An Obituary to Hart Crane)
- Song for the Last Act
- Apostate
- Kennst du das land
- Ode to the Confederate Dead
- The Mediterranean
- Repose of Rivers
- My Grandmother’s Love Letters
- At Melville’s Tomb
- To Brooklyn Bridge
- Atlantis
- The Broken Tower
- A Song for Rustam
- The Zebras
- Tristan da Cunha
- Choosing a Mast
- The Flaming Terrapin
- Five Bells
- Yet I Do Marvel
- Heritage
- Inniskeen Road: July Evening
Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989)
- Heart of Autumn
- Slough
- In Westminster Abbey
- Lullaby
- On this Island
- Musée des Beaux Arts
- As I Walked Out One Evening
- September 1, 1939
- The Sunlight on the Garden
- Snow
- Imperial Adam
- The Double Looking-Glass
- The Mayan Books
- Life’s Circumnavigators
- The Swan
- Song for War
- Delos
- Staring at the Sea on the Day of the Death of Another
- Those Winter Sundays
- The Other
- A Musician’s Wife
- For My Daughter
- Twenty-four Years
- A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London
- Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night
- And Death Shall Have No Dominion
- In My Craft or Sullen Art
- Fife Tune
- The Tomb of Lt. John Learmonth, A.I.F.
- Bora Ring
- Bullocky
- Nigger’s Leap, New England
- Sanctuary
- I: Barn Owl
- II: Nightfall
- Church Going
- Going, Going
- High Windows
- More Light! More Light!
- A Letter
- Amor Vincit Omnia
- For Louis Pasteur
- Mansion
- Corson’s Inlet
- Gravelly Run
- Easter Morning
- Cascadilla Falls
Elizabeth Jennings (1926-2001)
- A Song at the Beginning of Autumn
- Rembrandt’s Late Self-Portraits
- One Flesh
- New Zealand
- Rocket Show
- Elegy for My Father’s Father
- The Farmhand
- The Infant of Biafra
- Poem in the Matukituki Valley
- Ararat
- A Rose for Janet
- All Aboard
- Adam’s Apple
- An Angel in Blythburgh Church
- An Exequy
- Sea Grapes
- Midsummer, Tobago
- Omeros
- September Song
- Requiem for the Plantagenet Kings
- A Kumquat for John Keats
- A Cold Coming
- V
- Noonday Axeman
- An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow
- The Last Hellos
- The Harvest Bow
- Beacons at Bealtaine
- Forgetfulness
- Sonnet
- Another Reason Why I Don’t Keep a Gun in The House
- In Carrowdore Churchyard
- Achill
- Everything is Going to be Alright
- From June to December: Summer Villanelle
- Engineers’ Corner
- Spared
- God Squad
- Dog Days
- Palinode
- A Song of Plurals
- Approaching a Significant Birthday, He Peruses The Norton Anthology of Poetry
- Perfect Binding
Gjertrud Schnackenberg (1953-)
- Darwin in 1881
- Supernatural Love
- The Paperweight
- Nativity
- From Blossoms
- The Cleaving
- Waking with Russell
- Long for This World
Michael Robbins (?)
- Walkman
- You Haven’t Texted Me Since Saturda