Over 100 selections embrace a wide range of themes and motifs: meditations on the meaning of existence, celebrations of life's joys, appreciations of the natural world, and many more.
Here are some of the most-loved poems in the English language, chosen not merely for their popularity, but for their literary quality as well. Dating from the Middle Ages to the 20th century, these splendid poems remain evergreen in their capacity to engage our minds and refresh our spirits.
This book is intended for teachers and true literature enthusiasts.
Contents:
Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold
The Lamb by William Blake
The Sick Rose by William Blake
The Tyger by William Blake
London by William Blake
My Last Duchess by Robert Browning
Thanatopsis by William Cullen Bryant
A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns
To A Mouse, On Turning Her Up In Her Nest With The Plough by Robert Burns
She Walks in Beauty by George Gordon Byron
The Destruction of Sennacherib by George Gordon Byron
So We’ll Go No More a Roving by George Gordon Byron
Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“I’m Nobody! Who Are You?” by Emily Dickinson
“This Is My Letter to the World” by Emily Dickinson
“I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died” by Emily Dickinson
“Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson
Jabberwocky by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson
The Good Morrow by John Donne
Holy Sonnet X by John Donne
Holy Sonnet XIV by John Donne
Hymn: Sung at the Completion of the Concord Monument by Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray
Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes by Thomas Gray
The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy
Love Bade Me Welcome by George Herbert
To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time by Robert Herrick
Upon Julia's Clothes by Robert Herrick
The Chambered Nautilus by Oliver Wendell Holmes
Old Ironsides by Oliver Wendell Holmes
Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins
The Windhover: To Christ Our Lord by Gerard Manley Hopkins
To An Athlete Dying Young by Alfred Edward Housman
Abou Ben Adhem by James Henry Leigh Hunt
Jenny Kissed Me by James Henry Leigh Hunt
To Celia by Ben Jonson
On My First Son by Ben Jonson
On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer by John Keats
Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats
Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats
La Belle Dame sans Merci by John Keats
“When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be” by John Keats
Gunga Din by Rudyard Kipling
Recessional by Rudyard Kipling
If - by Rudyard Kipling
The Village Blacksmith by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Children’s Hour by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
To Lucasta, Going to the Wars by Richard Lovelace
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love by Christopher Marlowe
To His Coy Mistress Andrew Marvell
Lucifer in Starlight by George Meredith
First Fig by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Sonnet: 19. On His Blindness by John Milton
Sonnet: 23. On His Deceased Wife by John Milton
“Adieu, Farewell Earth’s Bliss” by Thomas Nashe
Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen
To Helen by Edgar Allan Poe
The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe
Richard Cory by Edwin Arlington Robinson
Miniver Cheevy by Edwin Arlington Robinson
A Birthday by Christina Georgina Rossetti
Chicago by Carl Sandburg
Fog by Carl Sandburg
Sonnet XVIII by William Shakespeare
Sonnet LXXIII by William Shakespeare
Sonnet XCIV by William Shakespeare
Sonnet CXVI by William Shakespeare
Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley
To a Skylark by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Requiem by Robert Louis Stevenson
“Why So Pale and Wan, Fond Lover?” by John Suckling
The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Tennyson
Crossing the Bar by Alfred Tennyson
The Retreat by Henry Vaughan
Song by Edmund Waller
I Hear America Singing by Walt Whitman
O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman
A Noiseless Patient Spider by Walt Whitman
Barbara Frietchie by John Greenleaf Whittier
Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Sept. 3, 1802 by William Wordsworth
“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth
“The World Is Too Much with Us; Late and Soon” by William Wordsworth
The Lover Showeth How He Is Forsaken of Such as He Sometime Enjoyed by Thomas Wyatt
The Lake Isle of Innisfree by William Butler Yeats
When You Are Old by William Butler Yeats
The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats
To My Dear and Loving Husband by Anne Bradstreet
The Prologue by Anne Bradstreet
The Author To Her Book by Anne Bradstreet
Before the Birth of One of Her Children by Anne Bradstreet
Return to Tomhanick by Ann Eliza Bleecker
An Evening Prospect by Ann Eliza Bleecker
On Imagination by Phillis Wheatley
An Hymn to the Evening by Phillis Wheatley
Kitchener by George Orwell
Romance by George Orwell
Sometimes in the middle autumn days by George Orwell
A Dressed Man by George Orwell
A Little Poem by George Orwell
The Pagan by George Orwell