This is a ranked “Best Poems of All Time” meta-list, with hypertext links to the text of nearly every poem on the list. To create this meta-list, I compiled lists of best poetry from over 20 sources, including Internet lists and poetry anthologies. Unfortunately, many of the lists and anthologies I found are restricted to poems originally written in English, which eliminates the vast majority of poets and poems and creates an obvious English-language bias for which I apologize.  Also, most lists include only lyric poems and omit epic poetry. In order to correct some of these biases, I specifically added lists of the best epic poems and the best world/international poetry. Once I had compiled a list from that information, I went back to my original Best Poetry lists and added poems by poets who were listed on those earlier lists but did not make it onto the new list.  Not satisfied, I then created a meta-list of Best Poets of All Time, identified those poets who were not included yet, researched their most well-regarded poems and added those to the list. Still unsatisfied with the underrepresentation of Asian poetry, I made lists of the best poets of China, Japan and Persia, researched their best poems and added some of them to the list.  I am disappointed that some highly-regarded poets are missing (e.g., Nobel Prize winners Eugenio Montale and Tomas Tranströmer; U.S. Poet Laureates Donald Hall, Robert Pinsky, Rita Dove, Mona Van Duyn, etc.), but overall I feel confident that this somewhat lengthy list contains many of the best poems ever written.

NOTE 1: Because so many poems do not have specific dates of authorship, I have included the birth and death dates of the poet instead, and arranged poems that are on the same number of lists in chronological order by poet’s date of birth.  Anonymous poems are assigned the approximate date of authorship.

NOTE 2: For a list of the best poets (arranged by birthdate) and their best poems, go here.  For a list of the best poems in chronological order, go here.  These lists do not have links, but they do have a larger number of poets and poems than the ranked list.

On 8 “Best Poems” Lists
Daffodils (“I wandered lonely as a cloud”)
– William Wordsworth (UK, 1770-1850)

Sonnets from the Portuguese 43 (“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”)
– Elizabeth Barrett Browning (UK, 1806-1861)

On 7 Lists
If
– Rudyard Kipling (UK, 1865-1936)

6 Lists
The Tyger
– William Blake (UK, 1757-1827)

Kubla Khan
– Samuel Taylor Coleridge (UK, 1772-1834)

Ozymandias
– Percy Bysshe Shelley (UK, 1792-1822)

The Raven
Annabel Lee
– Edgar Allan Poe (US, 1809-1849)

A Noiseless Patient Spider
– Walt Whitman (US, 1819-1892)

Dover Beach
– Matthew Arnold (UK, 1822-1888)

The Windhover
– Gerard Manley Hopkins (UK, 1844-1889)

The Road Not Taken
– Robert Frost (US, 1874-1963)

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
– Dylan Thomas (UK: Wales, 1914-1953)

5
The Epic of Gilgamesh
– Anonymous (Mesopotamia, c. 2000 BCE)

The Aeneid
– Virgil (Ancient Rome, 70-19 BCE)

Metamorphoses
– Ovid (Ancient Rome, 43 BCE – 17 CE)

Returning to Live in the Country
– Tao Yuanming (Tao Qian) (China, 365-427 CE)

Deer Park
– Wang Wei (China, 699-759 CE)

Jade Stairs Lament
The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter (A Poem of Changgan)
– Li Bai (Li Po) (China, 705-762 CE)

Beowulf
– Anonymous (UK, c. 1000 CE)

To the Tune of ‘Fisherman’s Pride’
– Li Qingzhao (China, 1084-1151)

Sonnet 18 (“Shall I compare Thee to a summer’s day”)
– William Shakespeare (UK, 1564-1616)

Holy Sonnet X (“Death be not proud…”)
– John Donne (UK, 1572-1631)

When I Consider How My Light Is Spent (On His Blindness)
– John Milton (UK, 1608-1674)

A Red, Red Rose
– Robert Burns (UK: Scotland, 1759-1796)

So, We’ll Go No More A Roving
She Walks In Beauty
– George Gordon, Lord Byron (UK, 1788-1824)

La Belle Dame Sans Merci
– John Keats (UK, 1795-1821)

The Charge of the Light Brigade
– Alfred, Lord Tennyson (UK, 1809-1892)

My Last Duchess
– Robert Browning (UK, 1812-1889)

O Captain! My Captain!
– Walt Whitman (US, 1819-1892)

‘Hope’ Is the thing with feathers
– Emily Dickinson (US, 1830-1886)

Jabberwocky
– Lewis Carroll (UK, 1832-1898)

The Darkling Thrush
– Thomas Hardy (UK, 1840-1928)

When You Are Old
The Second Coming
– W. B. Yeats (Ireland, 1865-1939)

Richard Cory
– Edwin Arlington Robinson (US, 1869-1935)

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
– Robert Frost (US, 1874-1963)

The Red Wheelbarrow
– William Carlos Williams (US, 1883-1963)

The Waste Land
– T.S. Eliot (US/UK, 1888-1965)

4
The Iliad
The Odyssey
– Homer (attrib.) (Greece, c. 800 BCE)

Farewell
Replying to Subprefect Zhang
A Green Stream
The Bamboo Grove
– Wang Wei (China, 699-759 CE)

Bani Adam (All human beings are in truth akin)
– Saadi Shirazi (Persia/Iran, 1193-1291)

The Divine Comedy
– Dante Aligheri (Italy, 1265-1321)

O beautiful wine bearer, bring forth the cup (Ghazal 1)
– Hafez (Hafiz) (Persia/Iran, 1329-1385)

The Canterbury Tales
– Geoffrey Chaucer (UK, 1343-1400)

Paradise Lost
– John Milton (UK, 1608-1674)

The Passionate Shepherd to his Love
– Christopher Marlowe (UK, 1564-1593)

All the World’s a Stage (from As You Like It)
Sonnet 65 (“Since brass, nor stone, nor earth”)
– William Shakespeare (UK, 1564-1616)

On my First Son
Song To Celia  (“Drink to me only with  thine eyes”)
– Ben Jonson (UK, 1572-1637)

Upon Julia’s Clothes
– Robert Herrick (UK, 1591-1674)

Song (“Go, lovely rose – “)
– Edmund Waller (UK, 1606-1687)

To His Coy Mistress
– Andrew Marvell (UK, 1621-1678)

Buying leeks
– Yosa Buson (Japan, 1716-1784)

On Being Brought from Africa to America
– Phillis Wheatley (West Africa/US, 1753-1784)

Frost at Midnight
– Samuel Taylor Coleridge (UK, 1772-1834)

Thanatopsis
– William Cullen Bryant (US, 1794-1878)

On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer
Ode on Melancholy
– John Keats (UK, 1795-1821)

Crossing the Bar
– Alfred, Lord Tennyson (UK, 1809-1892)

The Owl and the Pussycat
– Edward Lear (UK, 1812-1888)

Two in the Campagna
– Robert Browning (UK, 1812-1889)

Success is counted sweetest
– Emily Dickinson (US, 1830-1886)

Remember
– Christina Rossetti (UK, 1830-1894)

Invictus
– William Ernest Henley (UK, 1849-1903)

Requiem
– Robert Louis Stevenson (UK: Scotland, 1850-1894)

The Drunken Boat
– Arthur Rimbaud (France, 1854-1891)

Sailing to Byzantium
– W. B. Yeats (Ireland, 1865-1939)

Directive
– Robert Frost (US, 1874-1963)

Fog
– Carl Sandburg (US, 1878-1967)

The Cantos (I, II, III, IV, XIII, XIV, XVI, XXXIV, XXXVI, XXXVII, XLV, XLIX, LXXII, LXXXI)
– Ezra Pound (US, 1885-1972)

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
– T.S. Eliot (US/UK, 1888-1965)

You who Loved Me with the Falseness
Whence Cometh Such Tender Rapture?
– Marina Tsvetaeva (Russia, 1892-1941)

Dulce et Decorum Est
– Wilfred Owen (UK, 1893-1918)

Radio Poem
– Bertolt Brecht (Germany, 1898-1956)

Lullaby
– W.H. Auden (UK/US, 1907-1973)

One Art
– Elizabeth Bishop (US, 1911-1979)

Fern Hill
– Dylan Thomas (UK: Wales, 1914-1953)

Still I Rise
– Maya Angelou (US, 1928-2014)

A Woman Unconscious
– Ted Hughes (UK, 1930-1998)

August
– Mary Oliver (US, 1935- )

Siren Song
– Margaret Atwood (Canada, 1939- )

Valentine
– Carol Ann Duffy (UK: Scotland, 1955- )

3
Mahabharata
– Vyasa (attrib.) (India, c. 300 CE)

Drinking Wine #5
– Tao Yuanming (Tao Qian) (China, 365-427 CE)

Autumn Evening in a Mountain Retreat
Passing Hidden Fragrance Temple
Birds Calling in the Ravine
Drifting on the Lake
Mourning Yin Yao
A Song of an Autumn Night
A Song of Peach Blossom River
– Wang Wei (China, 699-759 CE)

A Quiet Night Thought
Long Yearning
Farewell to Meng Hao-jan
Drinking Alone in the Moonlight
The Moon at the Fortified Pass
Chuang Tzu and the Butterfly
– Li Bai (Li Po) (China, 705-762 CE)

Song of an Old Cypress
To My Retired Friend Wei
Thinking of Li Bai at the End of the Sky
Spring Night in the Left Office
Moonlit Night
Ballad of the Army Carts
– Du Fu (Tu Fu) (China, 712-770)

The Rubaiyat
– Omar Khayyam (Persia/Iran, 1048-1131)

To the Tune of ‘Intoxicated under the shadow of flowers’
To the Tune of ‘Like a dream’
– Li Qingzhao (China, 1084-1151)

Bustan (Bostan) (The Orchard)
– Saadi Shirazi (Persia/Iran, 1193-1291)

Sonnets To Laura in Life: 109
– Petrarch (Italy, 1304-1374)

Where is my Ruined Life? (Ghazal 12)
– Hafez (Persia/Iran, 1329-1385)

Sonnet 30 (“When to the sessions of sweet silent thought”)
Sonnet 71 (“No longer mourn for me when I am dead”)
Sonnet 94 (“They that have power to hurt and will do none”)
Sonnet 129 (“The expense of spirit in a waste of shame”)
Sonnet 130 (“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”)
Sonnet 138 (“When my love swears she is made of truth”)
Sonnet 146 (“Pour soul, the centre of my sinful earth”)
– William Shakespeare (UK, 1564-1616)

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
To Daffodils
– Robert Herrick (UK, 1591-1674)

The Collar
– George Herbert (UK, 1593-1633)

Sir Patrick Spens
– Anonymous (UK: Scotland, c. 1600)

Orsames’ Song (“Why so pale and wan, fond lover?”) (from Aglaura)
– Sir John Suckling (UK, 1609-1642)

To Lucasta, Going to the Wars
– Richard Lovelace (UK, 1618-1657)

Lord Randall
– Anonymous (UK, c. 1629)

An old pond
First day of spring
Four Haiku
First winter rain
– Matsuo Bashō (Japan, 1644-1694)

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat
– Thomas Gray (UK, 1716-1771)

A bat flits
Ploughing the land
Washing the hoe
Straw sandal half sunk
The behavior of the pigeon
Calligraphy of geese
His Holiness the Abbot
He’s on the porch
Coolness
– Yosa Buson (Japan, 1716-1784)

The Erlking
Mignon’s Longing
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Germany, 1749-1832)

On Imagination
To S. M., A Young African Painter, On Seeing His Works
On Virtue
– Phillis Wheatley (West Africa/US, 1753-1784)

Jerusalem (“And did those feet in ancient  time…”)
The Sick Rose
London
Auguries of Innocence
– William Blake (UK, 1757-1827)

To a Mouse (On Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough)
– Robert Burns (UK: Scotland, 1759-1796)

Ode to Joy
Archimedes
– Friedrich Schiller (Germany, 1759-1805)

All the time I pray to Buddha
– Kobayashi Issa (Japan, 1763-1828)

The World is Too Much with Us
Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
– William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
– Samuel Taylor Coleridge (UK, 1772-1834)

Thee, Thee, Only Thee
Tis the Last Rose of Summer
The Meeting of the Waters
Oft in the Stilly Night
– Thomas Moore (Ireland, 1779-1852)

Don Juan
The Destruction of Sennacherib
– George Gordon, Lord Byron (UK, 1788-1824)

Ode to the West Wind
To a Skylark
– Percy Bysshe Shelley (UK, 1792-1822)

I Am
– John Clare (UK, 1793-1864)

When I have Fears that I may Cease to Be
Ode On A Grecian Urn
Ode To A Nightingale
Ode to Psyche
To Autumn
– John Keats (UK, 1795-1821)

Mariana
– Alfred, Lord Tennyson (UK, 1809-1892)

Old Ironsides
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (US, 1809-1894)

I Hear America Singing
When I Heard The Learn’d Astronomer
Whoever You Are Now Holding Me Now in Hand
As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days
Song of the Redwood Tree
In Paths Untrodden
Shut Not Your Doors
Good-Bye My Fancy!
A child said, What is the grass?
To You
– Walt Whitman (US, 1819-1892)

The Blessed Damozel
– Dante Gabriel Rossetti (UK, 1828-1882)

A Narrow Fellow in the Grass
I’m Nobody! Who are you? 
Wild Nights! Wild Nights!
After Great Pain a Formal Feeling Comes
I Felt a Funeral in My Brain
Much Madness Is Divinest Sense
The Soul selects her own society
A Bird came down the Walk
There’s a Certain Slant of Light
– Emily Dickinson (US, 1830-1886)

God’s Grandeur
Carrion Comfort
– Gerard Manley Hopkins (UK, 1844-1889)

Sensation
Evil 
The Sleeper in the Valley
– Arthur Rimbaud (France, 1854-1891)

A Shropshire Lad 19 (To An Athlete Dying Young)
– A.E. Housman (UK, 1859-1936)

The Gardener #38 (“My Love Once upon a Time”)
The Lotus (Gitanjali #20)
A Moment’s Indulgence (Gitanjali #5)
Endless Time (Gitanjali #1)
– Rabindranath Tagore (India, 1861-1941)

Waiting for the Barbarians
– Constantine P. Cavafy (Greece, 1863-1933)

The Lake Isle of Innisfree
Easter 1916
Leda and the Swan
– W. B. Yeats (Ireland, 1865-1939)

Miniver Cheevy
– Edwin Arlington Robinson (US, 1869-1935)

The Listeners
– Walter de la Mare (UK, 1873-1956)

Susie Asado
Guillaume Apollinaire
– Gertrude Stein (US, 1874-1946)

Birches
Mending Wall
Acquainted with the Night
– Robert Frost (US, 1874-1963)

Chicago
– Carl Sandburg (US, 1878-1967)

The Snow Man
The Emperor of Ice Cream
– Wallace Stevens (US, 1879-1955)

The Highwayman
– Alfred Noyes (UK, 1880-1958)

This is Just to Say
– William Carlos Williams (US, 1883-1963)

The Soldier
– Rupert Brooke (UK, 1887-1915)

Shine, Perishing Republic
– Robinson Jeffers (US, 1887-1962)

Poetry
The Fish
– Marianne Moore (US, 1887-1972)

Dialogue Between Hamlet and His Conscience
Little World
The Demon in Me
In Paris
To Mother
Grey Hairs
Girlfriend (cycle)
The Window
For my Poems, Written so Early
Conversation with a Genius
You Walk, and Look Like Me
– Marina Tsvetaeva (Russia, 1892-1941)

First Fig
– Edna St. Vincent Millay (US, 1892-1950)

Anthem for Doomed Youth
– Wilfred Owen (UK, 1893-1918)

I Want To Go with the One I Love
On the Critical Attitude
Parting
Contemplating Hell
Mack the Knife
The Mask of Evil
To Be Read in the Morning and at Night
United Front Song
– Bertolt Brecht (Germany, 1898-1956)

Voyages
– Hart Crane (US, 1899-1932)

Harlem (Dream Deferred)
– Langston Hughes (US, 1902-1967)

If You Forget Me
– Pablo Neruda (Chile, 1904-1973)

Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep
– Mary Elizabeth Frye (US, 1905-2004)

In Memory of W.B. Yeats
– W.H. Auden (UK/US, 1907-1973)

Filling Station
– Elizabeth Bishop (US, 1911-1979)

Those Winter Sundays
– Robert Hayden (US, 1913-1980)

The Key of Water
– Octavio Paz (Mexico, 1914-1998)

A Sketch for a Modern Love Poem
– Tadeusz Rozewicz (Poland, 1921-2014)

The Heaven of Animals
– James Dickey (US, 1923-1997)

Elegy of Fortinbras
What Mr. Cogito Thinks About Hell
– Zbigniew Herbert (Poland, 1924-1998)

Easter Morning
An Improvisation for Angular Momentum
Gravelly Run
Hymn
In Memoriam Mae Noblitt
– A.R. Ammons (US, 1926-2001)

A Blessing
– James Wright (US, 1927-1980)

For John Clare
Just Walking Around
– John Ashbery (US, 1927- )

Diving into the Wreck
– Adrienne Rich (US, 1929-2012)

How To Paint a Water Lily
Crow’s Fall
Old Age Gets Up
The Harvest Moon
The Thought Fox
Wind
– Ted Hughes (UK, 1930-1998)

Daddy
– Sylvia Plath (US, 1932-1963)

A Meeting
At Blackwater Pond
The Journey
The Summer Day
When Death Comes
Wild Geese
– Mary Oliver (US, 1935- )

Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing
The Moment
This is a Photograph of Me
Variation on the Word Sleep
Morning in the Burned House
In the Secular Night
Backdrop Addresses Cowboy
– Margaret Atwood (Canada, 1939- )

2
Fragment 42
Fragment 155
– Sappho (Greece, 630-570 BCE)

Odes, Book I: XXV (“Now the young men come less often”)
– Horace (Ancient Rome, 65-8 BCE)

Reading the Classic of Hills and Seas
– Tao Yuanming (Tao Qian) (China, 365-427 CE)

Huazi Ridge
Temple Tree Path
At the Lake Pavilion
A Message from my Lodge at Wangchuan to Pei Di
At Parting
Lament For Mêng Hao-jan
One-Hearted
– Wang Wei (China, 699-759 CE)

The Exile’s Letter
Drinking with Someone in the Mountains
Taking Leave of a Friend                            
On Climbing in Nan-king to the Terrace of Phoenixes
Alone, Looking at the Mountain
Amidst the Flowers a Jug of Wine
Autumn River Song
About Du Fu
To Du Fu from Shantung
Climbing West of Lotus Flower Peak
Confessional
Looking for a Monk and not Finding Him
Visiting a Taoist on Tiatien Mountain
To Wang Lun
Farewell to Meng Hao-Jan
– Li Bai (Li Po) (China, 705-762 CE)

Enjoying Flowers, Walking Alone on a River Bank (#5, #6)
Spring View
Thinking of My Brothers on a Moonlit Night
Four Rhymes to see off General Yan again at Fenji Station
On meeting Li Guinian, south of the river
– Du Fu (China, 712-770)

Wulf and Eadwacer
– Anonymous (UK, c. 960-990 CE)

Shahnameh
– Ferdowsi (Persia/Iran, 940-1020 CE)

Dreaming of My Deceased Wife on the Night of the 20th Day of the First Month
Impromptu Verse (“My frosty hair blows loosely in the wind”)
Mid-Autumn Moon
New Year’s Watch
Visiting the Temple of Auspicious Fortune Alone on Winter Solstice
Visiting the Temple of the God of Mercy on a Rainy Day
Written While Drunk in Lake-View Pavilion on the 27th Day of the Sixth Month
Remembrance
The Immortal by the River
– Su Shi (Su Dongpo) (China, 1037-1101)

Song of Roland
– Anonymous (France, c. 1100)

Confession in Pavia
– Archpoet (Germany, c. 1130-c.1165)

Gulistan (Golestan) (The Rose Garden)
– Saadi Shirazi (Persia/Iran, 1193-1291)

Nibelungenlied
– Anonymous (Germany, c. 1200)

Birdsong
A Stone I died
Come, Come, Whoever You Are
At the Twilight
– Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (Persia/Iran, 1207-1273)

Meditation on the Past at Tong Pass
– Zhang Yanghao (China, 1270-1329)

Sonnets To Laura In Life: 156 (“My galley, charged with forgetfulness”)
– Petrarch (Italy, 1304-1374)

Wild Deer
Oh Turkish maid of Shiraz! in thy hand (Ode 5)
Last Night, as Half Asleep I Dreaming Lay (Ode 44)
Rubaiyat 1 (“The only vision I have is your sight”)
– Hafez (Persia/Iran, 1329-1385)

The Unquiet Grave
– Anonymous (UK, c. 1400)

Adam Lay ybownden
– Anonymous (UK, c. 1400)

I Syng of a Maiden
– Anonymous (UK, c. 1400)

To Mistress Margaret Hussey
– John Skelton (UK, c. 1463-1529)

Whoso List to Hunt, I Know where is an Hind
The Lover Showeth How He is Forsaken
– Sir Thomas Wyatt (UK, 1503-1542)

Western Wind (Westron Wynde)
– Anonymous (UK, c. 1530)

The Faerie Queene
Amoretti XXX (“My love is like to ice, and I to fire”)
– Edmund Spenser (UK, 1552-1599)

The Lie
The Nymph’s Reply To The Shepherd
The Passionate Man’s Pilgrimage
– Sir Walter Raleigh (UK, 1552-1618)

The Burning Babe
– Robert Southwell (UK, c. 1561-1595)

Tichborne’s Elegy (“My prime of youth is but a frost of cares”)
– Chidiock Tichborne (UK, 1562-1586)

Sonnet 1 (“From fairest creatures we desire increase”)
Sonnet 12 (“When I do count the clock that tells the time”)
Sonnet 20 (“A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted”)
Sonnet 29 (“When in disgrace with fortune and in men’s eyes”)
Sonnet 55 (“Not marble, nor the gilded monuments”)
Sonnet 73 (“That time of year thou mayst in me behold”)
Sonnet 76 (“Why is my verse so barren of new pride”)
Sonnet 106 (“When in the chronicle of wasted time”)
Sonnet 107 (“Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul”)
Sonnet 116 (“Let me not to the marriage of true minds”)
Sonnet 127 (“In the old age black was counted fair”)
Sonnet 147 (“My love is a fever, longing still”)
– William Shakespeare (UK, 1564-1616)

Spring, the sweet spring (from Summer’s Last Will and Testament)
– Thomas Nashe (UK, 1567-1601)

Rose-Cheeked Laura
– Thomas Campion (UK, 1567-1620)

Song (“Go and catch a falling star”)
The Good Morrow
The Anniversary
The Canonization
The Ecstasy
The Flea
The Funeral
The Sun Rising
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward
Holy Sonnet I (“Thou has made me, and shall thy work decay”)
Holy Sonnet V (“I am a little world made cunningly”)
Holy Sonnet VII (“At the round earths imagin’d corners, blow”)
Holy Sonnet XIV (“Batter my heart, three-personed God”)
– John Donne (UK, 1572-1631)

To Penshurst
– Ben Jonson (UK, 1572-1637)

The Argument of His Book
Corinna’s Going a Maying
Delight in Disorder
– Robert Herrick (UK, 1591-1674)

An Exequy To His Matchless, Never-to-be-forgotten Friend
– Henry King (UK, 1592-1669)

Easter Wings
Jordan (I)
The Pulley
Redemption
Virtue
– George Herbert (UK: Wales, 1593-1633)

To My Inconstant Mistress
– Thomas Carew (UK, 1595-1640)

Tom O’Bedlam
– Anonymous (UK, c. 1600)

Sonnet XVIII. On the Late Massacre in Piedmont
Sonnet XXIII. On His Deceased Wife
Il Penseroso
L’Allegro
Lycidas 
– John Milton (UK, 1608-1674)

The Three Ravens
– Anonymous (UK, c. 1611)

To My Dear and Loving Husband
– Anne Bradstreet (UK/US, 1612-1672)

Bermudas
The Definition of Love
The Garden
– Andrew Marvell (UK, 1621-1678)

The Retreat
They Are All Gone into the World of Light
– Henry Vaughan (UK: Wales, 1621-1695)

Mac Flecknoe 
A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day, 1687
To the Memory of Mr. Oldham
– John Dryden (UK, 1631-1700)

A bee
The dragonfly
Fleas, lice 
A caterpillar
A cicada shell
What fish feel
A wild sea
Spring rain
Autumn moonlight
First snow
Winter solitude
Winter garden
Stillness
The oak tree
A field of cotton
Awake at night
Moonlight slanting
The clouds come and go
How admirable
Won’t you come and see 
None is travelling 
Don’t imitate me
Basho’s Death Poem
– Matsuo Bashō (Japan, 1644-1694)

A Description of the Morning
– Jonathan Swift (Ireland/UK, 1667-1745)

Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot
– Alexander Pope (UK, 1688-1744)

The Vanity of Human Wishes
– Samuel Johnson (UK, 1709-1784)

Hokku Poems in Four Seasons
The spring sea rising
The end of spring
Early summer rain
Harvest moon
The willow leaves fallen
Haiku (The winter river…)
Dawn
Not quite dark yet
Evening wind
Blown from the west
Lighting one candle
My arm for a pillow
Sparrow singing
They end their flight 
Before the white chrysanthemum
Blow of an ax
Old well
Elegy to the Old Man Hokuju
– Yosa Buson (Japan, 1716-1784)

The Deserted Village
– Oliver Goldsmith (Ireland/UK, 1730-1774)

Light Shining out of Darkness
– William Cowper (UK, 1731-1800)

Constancy in Change
The Beautiful Night
The Fisherman
The Dance of the Dead
At Midnight Hour
Farewell
Proximity of the Beloved One
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Germany, 1749-1832)

A Poison Tree
The Lamb
The Clod and the Pebble
The Chimney Sweeper
The Little Black Boy
Mock On, Mock On! Voltaire, Rousseau
To the Evening Star
– William Blake (UK, 1757-1827)

Holy Willie’s Prayer
John Anderson My Jo, John
– Robert Burns (UK: Scotland, 1759-1796)

The Glove – A Tale
Evening
The Artists
– Friedrich Schiller (Germany, 1759-1805)

The snow is melting
Even with insects
Writing shit about new snow
A cuckoo sings
I’m going out
How much
Don’t know about the people
Ducks bobbing on the water
Even on the smallest islands
Blossoms at night
In this world
With my father
It once happened
Pissing in the snow
Last time, I think
That pretty girl
Summer night
Windy fall
Seen
New Year’s morning
The crow
Don’t worry, spiders
A bath when you’re born
In spring rain
A huge frog and I
– Kobayashi Issa (Japan, 1763-1828)

Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey
London, 1802
Lucy
Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
Resolution and Independence
The Solitary Reaper
– William Wordsworth (UK: 1770-1850)

Dejection: An Ode
– Samuel Taylor Coleridge (UK, 1772-1834)

On His Seventy-Fifth Birthday
Dirce
Rose Aylmer
– Walter Savage Landor (UK, 1775-1864)

Abou Ben Adhem
Jenny Kiss’d me
– James Henry Leigh Hunt (UK, 1784-1859)

When We Two Parted
– George Gordon, Lord Byron (UK, 1788-1824)

The Masque of Anarchy
Music When Soft Voices Die (To ___)
Adonais; An Elegy on the Death of John Keats
England in 1819
– Percy Bysshe Shelley (UK, 1792-1822)

First Love
– John Clare (UK, 1793-1864)

To a Waterfowl
– William Cullen Bryant (US, 1794-1878)

Bright Star
Endymion 
The Eve of St. Agnes
– John Keats (UK, 1795-1821)

Eugene Onegin: A Romance of Russian Life in Verse
– Alexander Pushkin (Russia, 1799-1837)

Concord Hymn
Days
The Rhodora
The Snow-storm
– Ralph Waldo Emerson (US, 1803-1882)

Sonnets from the Portuguese 14 (“If thou must love me, let it be for nought”)
– Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

The Arrow and the Song
The Children’s Hour
The Village Blacksmith
My Lost Youth
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (US, 1807-1882)

Barbara Frietchie
Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl
– John Greenleaf Whittier (US, 1807-1892)

A Dream Within A Dream
To Helen
Alone
– Edgar Allan Poe (US, 1809-1849)

Ulysses
Break, Break, Break
The Eagle
The Lotos-eaters
– Alfred, Lord Tennyson (UK, 1809-1892)

The Chambered Nautilus
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (US, 1809-1894)

The Pied Piper of Hamelin
Home-thoughts, from Abroad
– Robert Browning (UK, 1812-1889)

Sic Vita
– Henry David Thoreau (US, 1817-1862)

Remembrance
– Emily Brontë (UK, 1818-1848)

The Latest Decalogue
Say Not the Struggle nought Availeth
– Arthur Hugh Clough (UK, 1819-1861)

A Clear Midnight
Beat! Beat! Drums!
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking
President Lincoln’s Burial Hymn
Song of Myself
To a Locomotive in Winter
Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night
– Walt Whitman (US, 1819-1892)

Battle-Hymn of the Republic
– Julia Ward Howe (US, 1819-1910)

A Carcass
Hymn to Beauty
Invitation to the Voyage
– Charles Baudelaire (France, 1821-1867)

The Scholar Gipsy
– Matthew Arnold (UK, 1822-1888)

Lucifer in Starlight
– George Meredith (UK, 1828-1909)

This is my letter to the world
I Heard a Fly Buzz – when I died
Because I could not stop for death
As imperceptibly as grief
The Bible Is an Antique Volume
Fame Is a Bee
I Like a Look of Agony
I Never Lost as Much but Twice
I reckon – when I count it all
I Would Not Paint – a Picture
A Little East of Jordan
My Life Had Stood – a Loaded Gun
On a Columnar Self
The Bustle in a House
Publication – is the Auction
Renunciation – is a piercing Virtue
A Route of Evanescence
Safe in their Alabaster Chambers
Split the Lark and You’ll Find the Music
Tell all the truth but tell it slant
They shut me up in Prose
I cannot live with You
If those I loved were lost 
There is another sky
“Why do I love” You, Sir?
“Faith” is a fine invention
To hear an oriole sing
Ample make this bed
This Grass so little has to do
One need not be a Chamber – to be haunted
Surgeons must be very careful
To fight aloud, is very brave
– Emily Dickinson (US, 1830-1886)

A Birthday
Echo
Song
Goblin Market
Up-hill
– Christina Rossetti (UK, 1830-1894)

The Convergence of the Twain
Afterwards
The Man He Killed
Channel Firing
During Wind and Rain
In Time of ‘The Breaking of Nations’
The Ruined Maid
The Voice
– Thomas Hardy (UK, 1840-1928)

Pied Beauty
Felix Randal
Spring and Fall
Inversnaid
– Gerard Manley Hopkins (UK, 1844-1889)

Solitude
– Ella Wheeler Wilcox (US, 1850-1919)

The Seekers of Lice
A Dream for Winter
Romance
Dance of the Hanged Men
Ophelia
– Arthur Rimbaud (France, 1854-1891)

A Shropshire Lad 2 (“Loveliest of trees, the cherry now”)
A Shropshire Lad 54 (“With rue my heart is laden”)
A Shropshire Lad 62 (“Terence this is stupid stuff”)
– A.E. Housman (UK, 1859-1936)

The City
Ithaka
– Constantine P. Cavafy (Greece, 1863-1933)

Gunga Din
Recessional
The Way Through The Woods
– Rudyard Kipling (UK, 1865-1936)

Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
The Wild Swans at Coole
Among School Children
The Circus Animals’ Desertion
Lapis Lazuli
No Second Troy
– W. B. Yeats (Ireland, 1865-1939)

Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae
– Ernest Dowson (UK, 1867-1900)

A mountain village
A hollyhock
Night
A quart of phlegm
For love and for hate
– Masaoka Shiki (Japan, 1867-1902)

Luke Havergal
Mr. Flood’s Party
– Edwin Arlington Robinson (US, 1869-1935)

In the Desert
– Stephen Crane (US, 1871-1900)

Leisure
– W.H. Davies (UK: Wales, 1871-1940)

Silver
– Walter de la Mare (UK, 1873-1956)

Patterns
– Amy Lowell (US, 1874-1925)

Stanzas in Meditation (#1, #16, #83)
Tender Buttons
– Gertrude Stein (US, 1874-1946)

The Cremation of Sam McGee
– Robert William Service (UK/Canada, 1874-1958)

The Most of It
Fire and Ice
‘Out, Out -‘
The Oven Bird
The Gift Outright
Design 
Provide, Provide
An Old Man’s Winter Night
After Apple-Picking
– Robert Frost (US, 1874-1963)

Duino Elegies
Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes
– Rainer Maria Rilke (Austria/Switzerland, 1875-1926)

Grass
– Carl Sandburg (US, 1878-1967)

Tea at the Palaz of Hoon
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
Anecdote of the Jar
The Idea of Order at Key West
Peter Quince at the Clavier
Sunday Morning
– Wallace Stevens (US, 1879-1955)

Zone
– Guillaume Apollinaire (France, 1880-1918)

The Wishing Bone Cycle
– Jacob Nibenegenesabe (Canada, c. 1882 – c.1976)

The Goat
– Umberto Saba (Italy, 1883-1957)

Danse Russe
The Dance
The Yachts
– William Carlos Williams (US, 1883-1963)

Piano
Bavarian Gentians
Snake
The Ship of Death
– D.H. Lawrence (UK, 1885-1930)

A Girl
The Garden
– Ezra Pound (US, 1885-1972)

Trees
– Joyce Kilmer (US, 1886-1918)

What’s Bad
– Gottfried Benn (Germany, 1886-1956)

Birds and Fishes
Carmel Point
The Deer Lay Down Their Bones
– Robinson Jeffers (US, 1887-1962)

The Mind Is an Enchanting Thing
Nevertheless
The Steeple-Jack
What Are Years?
– Marianne Moore (US, 1887-1972)

To be great, be whole
Autopsychography
– Fernando Pessoa (Portugal, 1888-1935)

La Figlia che Piange
Four Quartets
Sweeney among the Nightingales
Journey of the Magi
– T.S. Eliot (US/UK, 1888-1965)

Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter
Piazza Piece
– John Crowe Ransom (US, 1888-1974)

Dead Water
– Wen Yiduo (China, 1889-1946)

Requiem
– Anna Akhmatova (Russia, 1889-1966)

Break of Day in the Trenches
– Isaac Rosenberg (UK, 1890-1918)

Help me, O Lord, to live through the night
The Stalin Epigram
The Necklace (“Take from my palms…”)
– Osip Mandelstam (Russia, 1891-1938)

The Trees of My Childhood
– Edith Södergran (Russia/Finland/Sweden, 1892-1923)

Black Stone on a White Stone
– Cesar Vallejo (Peru, 1892-1938)

Sonnet 41 (“I, Being born a woman and distressed”)
– Edna St. Vincent Millay (US, 1892-1950)

Ars Poetica
– Archibald MacLeish (US, 1892-1982)

Strange Meeting
– Wilfred Owen (UK, 1893-1918)

anyone lived in a pretty how town
since feeling is first
i carry your heart with me
– E. E. Cummings (US, 1894-1962)

Juan’s Song
Song for the Last Act
– Louise Bogan (US, 1897-1970)

Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias
The Unfaithful Housewife
Gypsy Ballads
– Federico García Lorca (Spain, 1898-1936)

The Bridge (incl. Proem: To Brooklyn Bridge)
– Hart Crane (US, 1899-1932)

Ode to the Confederate Dead
– Allen Tate (US, 1899-1979)

In Praise of Darkness (2)
– Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina, 1899-1986)

The Pleasures of the Door
– Francis Ponge (France, 1899-1988)

I’ve Dreamed of You So Much
– Robert Desnos (France, 1900-1945)

Mythistorema
– George Seferis (Greece, 1900-1971)

Ed È Subito Sera (And Suddenly It Is Evening)
– Salvatore Quasimodo (Italy, 1901-1968)

Things I didn’t know I loved
Angina Pectoris
– Nazim Hikmet (Turkey, 1902-1963)

Mother to Son
Suicide’s Note
Dreams
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
– Langston Hughes (US, 1902-1967)

A Word to Husbands
– Ogden Nash (US, 1902-1971)

Not Waving but Drowning
– Stevie Smith (UK, 1902-1971)

Don’t Kill Yourself
Seven-Sided Poem
Family Portrait
– Carlos Drummond de Andrade (Brazil, 1902-1987)

A Mirror
Face the Animal
– Jean Follain (France, 1903-1971)

Walking Around
– Pablo Neruda (Chile, 1904-1973)

“A” (#2, #7, #9, #14, #15, #17: A Coronal, #18, #19, #21: Rudens, Acts I & II, #21: Rudens, Act III, #22: Pt. 1, #22: Pt. 2)
– Louis Zukofsky (US, 1904-1978)

To New York
– Léopold Sédar Senghor (Senegal, 1906-2001)

Bagpipe Music
– Frederick Louis MacNeice (Ireland, 1907-1963)

Funeral Blues (“Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone”)
Musee des Beaux Arts
– W.H. Auden (UK, 1907-1973)

Elegy For Jane
I Knew A Woman
My Papa’s Waltz
The Waking
– Theodore Roethke (US, 1908-1963)

The Second Madrigal
She Does Not Remember
– Anna Swir (Poland, 1909-1984)

The End of Dodona II
– Yannis Ritsos (Greece, 1909-1990)

Brazil, January 1, 1502
The Fish
– Elizabeth Bishop (US, 1911-1979)

Before You Came
You Tell Us What to Do
– Faiz Ahmed Faiz (India/Pakistan, 1911-1984)

A Song on the End of the World
Dedication
– Czeslaw Milosz (Poland, 1911-2004)

All the Way from Akkad, from Elam, from Sumer
– Aimé Césaire (Martinique, 1913-2008)

In My Craft or Sullen Art
The Force that through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower
A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London
– Dylan Thomas (UK: Wales, 1914-1953)

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
– Randall Jarrell (US, 1914-1965)

Lessons of the War: 1. Naming of Parts
– Henry Reed (UK, 1914-1986)

My Last Afternoon with Uncle Devereaux Winslow
– Robert Lowell (US, 1917-1977)

the mother
We Real Cool
– Gwendolyn Brooks (US, 1917-2000)

Vergissmeinnicht
– Keith Douglas (UK, 1920-1944)

Death Fugue
Matiere de Bretagne
– Paul Celan (Romania, 1920-1970)

A Prayer That Will Be Answered
– Anna Kamienska (Poland, 1920-1986)

Advice to a Prophet
Love Calls Us To the Things of This World
– Richard Wilbur (US, 1921- )

Kinaxixi
– Agostinho Neto (Angola, 1922-1979)

An Arundel Tomb
Church Going
– Philip Larkin (UK, 1922-1985)

St. Sava’s Journey
– Vasko Popa (Serbia, 1922-1991)

A Ballad of Going Down to the Store
– Miron Bialoszewski (Poland, 1922-1983)

Old Leaves from the Chinese Earth
– Sadanand Rege (India, 1923-1982)

Zito the Magician
The Fly
– Miroslav Holub (Czech Republic, 1923-1998)

More Light! More Light!
– Anthony Hecht (US, 1923-2004)

In Praise of My Sister
– Wislawa Szymborska (Poland, 1923-2012)

The Tree, the Lamp
– Yves Bonnefoy (France, 1923- )

The Envoy of Mr. Cogito
– Zbigniew Herbert (Poland, 1924-1998)

A Pity. We Were Such a Good Invention
My Mother Once Told Me
– Yehuda Amichai (Israel, 1924-2000)

In the Storm of Roses (Aria 1)
– Ingeborg Bachmann (Austria, 1926-1973)

The Broken Home
– James Merrill (US, 1926-1995)

Howl
A Supermarket in California
Sunflower Sutra
– Allen Ginsberg (US, 1926-1997)

Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio
– James Wright (US, 1927-1980)

For the Anniversary of My Death
The Carrier of Ladders
– W.S. Merwin (US, 1927- )

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror
Glazunoviana
Syringa
Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape
– John Ashbery (US, 1927- )

The Truth the Dead Know
– Anne Sexton (US, 1928-1974)

Phenomenal Woman
Caged Bird
– Maya Angelou (US, 1928-2014)

Where the Sidewalk Ends
– Shel Silverstein (US, 1930-1999)

Love After Love
– Derek Walcott (Saint Lucia, 1930- )

The Colossus
Lady Lazarus
– Sylvia Plath (US, 1932-1963)

Babi Yar
– Yevgeny Yevtushenko (Russia, 1932- )

Ballad of the Dogs
– Lars Gustafsson (Sweden, 1936- )

Empire of Dreams
– Charles Simic (Serbia/US, 1938- )

The Tollund Man
Clearances
Digging
– Seamus Heaney (Ireland, 1939-2013)

As Soon as Fred Gets Out of Bed
Be Glad Your Nose is on Your Face
– Jack Prelutsky (US, 1940- )

Forgetfulness
– Billy Collins (US, 1941- )

I Go Back To May 1937
– Sharon Olds (US, 1942- )

Oranges
– Gary Soto (US, 1952- )

Havisham
Anne Hathaway
War Photographer
Stuffed
Words, Wide Night
– Carol Ann Duffy (UK: Scotland, 1955- )