Greatest Poems Ever Written


On the Idle Hill of Summer
A. E. Housman

Ode: Of Wit
Abraham Cowley

from The Rape of the Lock, from Canto 1
Alexander Pope

Ode on Solitude
Alexander Pope

from Essay on Man, Epistle II
Alexander Pope

from Essay on Criticism [“But most by Numbers”]
Alexander Pope

from The Lotos-Eaters
Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Tears, Idle Tears
Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The Charge of the Light Brigade
Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The Lady of Shalott
Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The Kraken
Alfred, Lord Tennyson

A London Thoroughfare. 2 A.M.
Amy Lowell

The Gallery
Andrew Marvell

To His Coy Mistress
Andrew Marvell

The Rights of Woman
Anna Laetitia Barbauld

The Author to Her Book
Anne Bradstreet

The Prologue
Anne Bradstreet

To My Dear and Loving Husband
Anne Bradstreet

The Introduction
Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea

Adam Posed
Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea

A Nocturnal Reverie
Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea

from Everyman
Anonymous

My Picture Left in Scotland
Ben Jonson

The Hourglass
Ben Jonson

X Mon. December [1744] hath xxxi days.
Benjamin Franklin

Chicago
Carl Sandburg

Fog
Carl Sandburg

The Sea View
Charlotte Smith

from Goblin Market
Christina Rossetti

A Birthday
Christina Rossetti

A Daughter of Eve
Christina Rossetti

In an Artist's Studio
Christina Rossetti

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
Christopher Marlowe

from Dr. Faustus, Scene 12
Christopher Marlowe

from The Divine Comedy, from The Inferno
Dante Alighieri

Jury Duty
Deena Linett

The Tiger in the Driveway
Deena Linett

The City in the Sea
Edgar Allan Poe

The Raven
Edgar Allan Poe

The Bells
Edgar Allan Poe

Annabel Lee
Edgar Allan Poe

Doc Hill
Edgar Lee Masters

Seth Compton
Edgar Lee Masters

from Amoretti: Sonnet 67
Edmund Spenser

from The Faerie Queene, from The First Booke
Edmund Spenser

Recuerdo
Edna St. Vincent Millay

First Fig
Edna St. Vincent Millay

Second Fig
Edna St. Vincent Millay

from The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám of Naishápúr
Edward FitzGerald

The Owl and the Pussy-Cat
Edward Lear

Miniver Cheevy
Edwin Arlington Robinson

The House on the Hill
Edwin Arlington Robinson

from Sonnets from the Portuguese
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Sonnet 43
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Stars
Emily Brontë

348
Emily Dickinson

712
Emily Dickinson

254
Emily Dickinson

303
Emily Dickinson

328
Emily Dickinson

The New Colossus
Emma Lazarus

In a Station of the Metro
Ezra Pound

I Write My Mother a Poem
Fleda Brown

The Women Who Loved Elvis All Their Lives
Fleda Brown

The Billion Heartbeats of the Mammal
Gary Fincke

The Magpie Evening: A Prayer
Gary Fincke

from The Canterbury Tales, from The Wife of Bath's Prologue
Geoffrey Chaucer

When We Two Parted
George Gordon, Lord Byron

She walks in beauty
George Gordon, Lord Byron

So, we’ll go no more a roving
George Gordon, Lord Byron

And Thou Art Dead, As Young and Fair
George Gordon, Lord Byron

Man
George Herbert

God's Grandeur
Gerard Manley Hopkins

Pied Beauty
Gerard Manley Hopkins

Spring and Fall
Gerard Manley Hopkins

[Carrion Comfort]
Gerard Manley Hopkins

Athletes
Grace Cavalieri

Dates
Grace Cavalieri

The Retreat
Henry Vaughan

They Are All Gone into the World of Light!
Henry Vaughan

The Fire of Drift-Wood
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

America
Herman Melville

Book 1, No. 5 (“To Pyrrha”)
Horace

Death, be not proud (Holy Sonnet 10)
John Donne

The Baite
John Donne

The Flea
John Donne

Song [Go and catch a falling star]
John Donne

To the Memory of Mr. Oldham
John Dryden

Burning Drift-Wood
John Greenleaf Whittier

Ichabod!
John Greenleaf Whittier

Ode on a Grecian Urn
John Keats

On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer
John Keats

La Belle Dame sans Merci
John Keats

from Paradise Lost, Book I
John Milton

When I Consider How My Light Is Spent
John Milton

A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General
Jonathan Swift

from On the Equality of the Sexes, Part I
Judith Sargent Murray

On the Welch Language
Katherine Philips

in the morning
Kenneth Carroll

Riding Shotgun
Kenneth Carroll

Climbing the Three Hills in Search of the Best Christmas Tree
Len Roberts

The List of Most Difficult Words
Len Roberts

Birthday Song
Leon Markowicz

Call Out
Leon Markowicz

Jabberwocky
Lewis Carroll

The Walrus and the Carpenter
Lewis Carroll

The Poetess’s Hasty Resolution
Margaret Cavendish

Dover Beach
Matthew Arnold

The Last Leaf
Oliver Wendell Holmes

The Chambered Nautilus
Oliver Wendell Holmes

Hélas
Oscar Wilde

Metamorphosis VII, 611 – 724
Ovid

Sympathy
Paul Laurence Dunbar

We Wear the Mask
Paul Laurence Dunbar

Ozymandias
Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ode to the West Wind
Percy Bysshe Shelley

Hymn to Intellectual Beauty
Percy Bysshe Shelley

To a Sky-Lark
Percy Bysshe Shelley

from The House of Night
Philip Freneau

To a Lady on the Death of Her Husband
Phillis Wheatley

To S. M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works
Phillis Wheatley

[The doubt of future foes exiles my present joy]
Queen Elizabeth I

Concord Hymn
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Brahma
Ralph Waldo Emerson

To Lucasta, Going to the Wars
Richard Lovelace

To Althea, from Prison
Richard Lovelace

My Last Duchess
Robert Browning

To a Mouse
Robert Burns

Auld Lang Syne
Robert Burns

A Red, Red Rose
Robert Burns

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Robert Frost

Nothing Gold Can Stay
Robert Frost

Mending Wall
Robert Frost

The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost

The Shivering Beggar
Robert Graves

To Virgins, to Make Much of Time
Robert Herrick

The Argument of His Book
Robert Herrick

To Find God
Robert Herrick

Recessional
Rudyard Kipling

If—
Rudyard Kipling

The Soldier
Rupert Brooke

Frost at Midnight
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Eolian Harp
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Kubla Khan
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

To Atthis
Sappho

I Am Not Yours
Sara Teasdale

To Mr. Stuart
Sarah Wentworth Morton

Out upon It!
Sir John Suckling

from Astrophil and Stella
Sir Philip Sidney

A Vision upon the Fairy Queen
Sir Walter Raleigh

The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd
Sir Walter Raleigh

The Lie
Sir Walter Raleigh

from War Is Kind
Stephen Crane

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
T. S. Eliot

Now Winter Nights Enlarge
Thomas Campion

A Song [Ask me no more where Jove bestows]
Thomas Carew

The Spring
Thomas Carew

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
Thomas Gray

The Convergence of the Twain
Thomas Hardy

Hap
Thomas Hardy

The Darkling Thrush
Thomas Hardy

I Remember, I Remember
Thomas Hood

Dirge
Thomas Lovell Beddoes

The time I’ve lost in wooing
Thomas Moore

Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms
Thomas Moore

They Flee from Me
Thomas Wyatt

If You're Anxious for to Shine in the High Aesthetic Line
W. S. Gilbert

The Emperor of Ice-Cream
Wallace Stevens

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
Wallace Stevens

from Song of Myself
Walt Whitman

from Passage to India
Walt Whitman

A Noiseless, Patient Spider
Walt Whitman

When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer
Walt Whitman

Anthem for Doomed Youth
Wilfred Owen

Little Lamb
William Blake

The Tyger
William Blake

Love’s Secret
William Blake

The Chimney-Sweeper
William Blake

The Lake Isle of Innisfree
William Butler Yeats

When You Are Old
William Butler Yeats

The Second Coming
William Butler Yeats

Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
William Butler Yeats

Invictus
William Ernest Henley

from Piers Plowman
William Langland

Sonnet 29
William Shakespeare

Sonnet 55
William Shakespeare

Sonnet 18
William Shakespeare

Sonnet 116
William Shakespeare

Sonnet 130
William Shakespeare

All the World’s a Stage
William Shakespeare

Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey
William Wordsworth

The Tables Turned
William Wordsworth

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
William Wordsworth

Expostulation and Reply
William Wordsworth

We Are Seven
William Wordsworth

Ode on Intimations of Immortality . . .
William Wordsworth

The world is too much with us
William Wordsworth

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