My 30 favourite short English poems

This is my personal English poetry anthology; I hope it will give you, dear reader, great pleasure in reading; perhaps as much as it gave me in (re-)citing the poems from memory. I learned many of these poems by rote 45 years ago as a schoolboy (thank you Carre's School, Sleaford, England). Schoolchildren nowadays do not learn poems as much by rote as we did then, so this poetry webpage is a concentrated essence of excellent poetry for schoolchildren, students of English Literature and poetry-lovers everywhere. Schoolchildren and students will NOT find a critique or summary of any of the poems cited here. Do your own homework creatively please! And enjoy!

If you are not sure of the poet's name, nor of the poem's title, you can just scroll to the bottom of this page, hit the "Search" button and then type in any Keyword/line/segment of the poem that you can remember. If my search-engine does not find what you want, it is because it is not one of MY favourite poems. Tough Luck! So just change the width of the search from 'site-local' to 'all the web' and try again :-)

The list is sorted alphabetically by the poets' surname. No rankings are given or desired. All of the poems are good, each in its own delectable way. Despite popular request, I have omitted "The good ship Venus" :-)

  1. William Blake, (The Tyger),
  2. Rupert Brooke, (The Soldier),
  3. Robert Browning, (Home-Thoughts, from Abroad),
  4. Robbie Burns, (A red, red rose),
  5. Lord Byron, (She walks in Beauty),
  6. Lewis Carroll, (Jabberwocky),
  7. G.K.Chesterton, (The Donkey),
  8. G.K.Chesterton (again:-) , (The Rolling English Road),
  9. Roald Dahl, (The Tummy Beast),
  10. William Henry Davies, (Leisure),
  11. Leigh Hunt, (Jenny kissed me),
  12. John Keats, (On first looking into Chapman's Homer),
  13. Rudyard Kipling, (IF - ),
  14. Philip Larkin, (This be the verse),
  15. Edward Lear, (The owl and the pussy-cat),
  16. John Gillespie Magee, (High Flight),
  17. Walter de la Mare, (Silver),
  18. John Masefield, (Cargoes),
  19. John Masefield (again:-) , (Sea Fever),
  20. Wilfred Owen, (Dulce et decorum est),
  21. Henry Reed, (Naming of Parts),
  22. William Shakespeare, (Shall I compare thee . . .),
  23. Percy Bysshe Shelley, (Ozymandias of Egypt),
  24. Stevie Smith, (Not waving but drowning),
  25. Dylan Thomas, (Do not go gentle into that good night),
  26. Edward Thomas, (Adlestrop),
  27. W.B. Yeats, (The Second Coming),
  28. William Wordsworth, (The daffodils),
  29. William Wordsworth (again:-) , (Upon Westminister Bridge).
  30. . . . and one nice last one, just for luck : Author unknown, Choosing Names.
Now, by way of contrast, go read some of my Vogon poetry :-)
Index/Home Impressum Blog Sitemap Search new/neu Site Meter
<BGSOUND SRC="britania.mid">