The Penguin Book of English Verse

1645
Edmund Waller Song (‘Go lovely Rose’)
Edmund Waller Of the Marriage of the Dwarfs
Edmund Waller To a Lady in a Garden
John Milton from On the Morning of Christs Nativity Compos’d 1629
‘It was the Winter wilde’

1646
Richard Crashaw from Divine Epigrams
Upon Our Saviours Tombe Wherein Never Man was Laid
Upon the Infant Martyrs
Richard Crashaw Musicks Duell
Sir John Suckling (Loves Siege)
John Hall An Epicurean Ode
James Shirley Epitaph on the Duke of Buckingham
James Shirley ‘The glories of our blood and state’

1647
John Cleveland Epitaph on the Earl of Strafford

1648
Sir Richard Fanshawe/Gongora A Great Favorit Beheaded
Robert Herrick from Hesperides
The Argument of His Book
Upon Julia’s Voice
Delight in Disorder
To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
The Comming of Good Luck
To Meddowes
The Departure of the Good Daemon
Upon Prew His Maid
On Himselfe
Robert Herrick The White Island: Or Place of the Blest

1649
Richard Lovelace from Lucasta
Song. To Lucasta, Going to the Warres
To Althea from Prison
The Grasse-hopper
William Drummond/Passerat Song
“Shephard loveth thow me vell?’

1650
James Graham, Marquis of Montrose On Himself, upon Hearing What was His Sentence
Anonymous from The Second Scottish Psalter
Psalm 124
Henry Vaughan from Silex Scintillans, Or Sacred Poems
The Retreate
‘Silence, and stealth of dayes! ’tis now’
The World

1651
William Cartwright No Platonique Love
John Cleveland The Antiplatonick
John Cleveland A Song of Marke Anthony
Thomas Stanley The Snow-ball
Thomas Stanley The Grassehopper
Sir Henry Wotton Upon the Sudden Restraint of the Earle of Somerset
Sir Richard Fanshawe/Horace Odes. IV, 7 To L. Manlius Torquatus
Richard Crashaw from The Flaming Heart. Upon the Book and Picture of the Seraphicall Saint Teresa

1653
Aurelian Townshend A Dialogue betwixt Time and a Pilgrime
Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle Of Many Worlds in This World

1655
Henry Vaughan from Silex Scintillans II
‘They are all gone into the world of light!’
Cock-crowing
The Night

1656
Abraham Cowley from Anacreontiques Translated Paraphrastically from the Greek
II. Drinking
X. The Grashopper
Abraham Cowley from Davideis
(Lot’s Wife)
William Strode Song (‘I saw faire Cloris walke alone’)
William Strode On Westwell Downes
John Taylor and Anonymous Non-sense
Sir John Suckling ‘Out upon it, I have lov’d’

1657
George Daniel Ode. The Robin

1659
Richard Lovelace The Snayl

1662
Samuel Butler from Hudibras
(The Presbyterian Knight)

1663
Abraham Cowley Ode. Upon Dr. Harvey
Abraham Cowley/Horace The Country Mouse. A Paraphrase upon Horace Book II, Satire 6

1665
Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury Sonnet. Made upon the Groves near Merlou Castle
John Dryden/Ovid from The First Book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses
(Deucalion and Pyrrha)

1694
John Dryden To My Dear Friend Mr. Congreve, on His Comedy, Call’d The Double-Dealer

1697
John Dryden/Virgil from Virgil’s Aeneis
from The Second Book (‘The Death of Priam)
from The Fourth Book (Fame)
from The Sixth Book (Charon)

1700
John Dryden/Ovid Of the Pythagorean Philosophy, from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book Fifteen
John Dryden from The Secular Masque
‘Chronos, Chronos, mend thy Pace’

1701
Sir Charles Sedley Song (‘Phillis, let’s shun the common Fate’)
Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea from The Spleen
‘O’er me, alas! thou dost too much prevail’

1704
William Congreve Song (‘Pious Celinda goes to Pray’rs’)
William Congreve A Hue and Cry after Fair Amoret

1706
Isaac Watts The Day of Judgement. An Ode. Attempted in English Sapphick

1707
Isaac Watts Crucifixion to the World by the Cross of Christ Gal. vi.14

1709
Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea Adam Pos’d
Matthew Prior An Ode (‘The Merchant, to secure his Treasure’)
Ambrose Phillips A Winter-Piece

1710
Jonathan Swift A Description of a City Shower

1712
Joseph Addison Ode (‘The Spacious Firmament on high’)

1713
Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea A Nocturnal Reverie

1714
Samuel Jones The Force of Love
Alexander Pope from The Rape of the Lock
from Canto I
from Canto V

1716
John Gay from Trivia: Or The Art of Walking the Streets of London
(Of the Weather)

1717
Alexander Pope Epistle to Miss Blount, on Her Leaving the Town, after the Coronation

1718
Matthew Prior A Better Answer to Cloe Jealous
Matthew Prior The Lady Who Offers Her Looking-Glass to Venus
Matthew Prior A True Maid

1719
Isaac Watts Man Frail, and God Eternal

1720
Allan Ramsay Polwart on the Green
John Gay My Own Epitaph

1722
Alexander Pope To Mr. Gay . . . on the Finishing His House
Jonathan Swift A Satirical Elegy. On the Death of a Late Famous General
William Diaper/Oppian from Oppian’s Halieuticks
(The Loves of the Fishes)

1724
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu Epistle from Mrs. Y(onge) to her Husband

1725
Edward Young from Love of Fame. Satire V
‘The languid lady next appears in state’
Henry Carey from Namby-Pamby. A Panegyric on the New Versification

1726
Abel Evans On Sir John Vanbrugh (The Architect). An Epigrammatical Epitaph
John Dyer from Grongar Hill
‘Now, I gain the Mountain’s Brow’
Allan Ramsay/Horace ‘What young Raw Muisted Beau Bred at his Glass’
James Thomson from Summer
(‘Forenoon. Summer Insects Described’)
(‘Night. Summer Meteors. A Comet’)

1727
John Gay from Fables
The Wild Boar and the Ram
Thomas Sheridan Tom Punsibi’s Letter to Dean Swift
Henry Carey A Lilliputian Ode on their Majesties’ Accession

1728
John Gay from The Beggar’s Opera
‘Were I laid on Grrenland’s Coast’

1731
Alexander Pope from An Epistle to Burlington
‘At Timon’s Villa let us pass a day’
Jonathan Swift The Day of Judgement
Jonathan Swift An Epigram on Scolding

1732
Jonathan Swift Mary the Cook-Maid’s Letter to Dr. Sheridan

1733
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (A Summary of Lord Lyttleton’s ‘Advice to a lady’)
Alexander Pope from An Epistle to Bathurst
(Sir Balaam)
George Farewell Quaerè

1734
Jonathan Swift A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed

1735
Alexander Pope from Of the Characters of Women: An Epistle to a Lady
‘Nothing so true as what you once let fall’
Alexander Pope from An Epistle from Mr. Pope, to Dr. Arbuthnot
‘You think this cruel? take it for a rule’
Alexander Pope Epitaph Intended for Sir Isaac Newton
John Dyer My Ox Duke

1737
Matthew Green from The Spleen
‘To cure the mind’s wrong biass, spleen’

1738
Samuel Johnson/Juvenal from London: A Poem in Imitation of the Third Satire of Juvenal
‘Tho’ grief and fondness in my breast rebel’
Alexander Pope from Epilogue to the Satires
Alexander Pope Epitaph for One Who Would Not Be Buried in Westminster Abbey

1739
Jonathan Swift from Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift
‘The Time is not remote, when I’

1740
Alexander Pope On Queen Caroline’s Death-bed
Samuel Johnson An Epitaph on Claudy Phillips, a Musician
Charles Wesley Morning Hymn
Alexander Pope from The Dunciad
(The Tribe of Fanciers)
(The Triumph of Dullness)

1744
Anonymous On the Death of Mr. Pope
from Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book
Anonymous Cock Robbin
Anonymous London Bridge

1745
Charles Wesley ‘Let Earth and Heaven combine’

1746
William Collins Ode, Written in the Beginning of the Year 1746
William Collins Ode to Evening

1747
William Shenstone Lines Written on a Window at the Leasowes at a Time of Very Deep Snow

1748
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu A Receipt to Cure the Vapours
Mary Leapor Mira’s Will
Christopher Smart A Morning-Piece, Or, An Hymn for the Hay-Makers

1749
Samuel Johnson/Juvenal from The Vanity of Human Wishes
‘When first the College Rolls receive his Name’

1751
Thomas Gray Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard

1755
Anonymous This is the House That Jack Built

1761
Christopher Smart from Jubilate Agno
‘For the doubling of flowers is the improvement of the gardners talent’
‘For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry’

1763
Christopher Smart from A Song to David
‘O David, highest in the list’

1764
Oliver Goldsmith from The Traveller, Or a Prospect of Society (Britain)
Samuel Johnson (Lines contributed to Goldsmith’s ‘The Traveller’)

1765
from Mother Goose’s Melody, or Sonnets for the Cradle
Anonymous ‘High diddle diddle’
from Thomas Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry
Anonymous Sir Patrick Spence
Anonymous Edward, Edward
Anonymous Lord Thomas and Fair Annet
Christopher Smart Hymn. The Nativity of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ

1766
Oliver Goldsmith from The Vicar of Wakefield
‘When lovely woman stoops to folly’

1769
Thomas Gray On L(or)d H(olland’)s Seat near M(argat)e, K(en)t

1770
Oliver Goldsmith from The Deserted Village
‘Sweet was the sound when oft at evening’s close’

1772
John Byrom On the Origin of Evil
Robert Fergusson The Daft-Days

1774
William Cowper Light Shining out of Darkness
William Cowper ‘Hatred and vengeance, my eternal portion’
Anonymous (Epitaph for Thomas Johnson, huntsman, Charlton, Sussex)
Oliver Goldsmith from Retaliation
(Edmund Burke)
(David Garrick)
(Joshua Reynolds)

1777
Richard Brinsley Sheridan On Lady Anne Hamilton
Samuel Johnson Prologue to Hugh Kelly’s ‘A Word to the Wise’
Samuel Johnson (Lines Contributed to Hawkesworth’s ‘The Rival)
Richard Brinsley Sheridan from The School for Scandal Song and Chorus (‘Here’s to the maiden of Bashful fifteen’)

1779
William Cowper The Contrite Heart. Isaiah lvii. 15
Robert Fergusson/Horace Odes I. II

1780
Samuel Johnson A Short Song of Congratulation

1783
Samuel Johnson On the Death of Dr. Robert Levet
William Blake To the Evening Star

1784
William Cowper from The Task
(The Winter Evening)
(The Winter Walk at Noon)

1786
Robert Burns To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest, with the Plough, November, 1785

1787
Robert Burns Address to the Unco Guid, Or the Rigidly Righteous

1789
William Blake from Songs of Innocence
Holy Thursday
Charlotte Smith Sonnet. Written in the Church-yard at Middleton in Sussex
Elizabeth Hands On an Unsociable Family

1791
Robert Burns Tam o’ Shanter. A Tale

1792
Robert Burns Song (‘Ae fond kiss, and then we sever’)

1793
William Blake from Visions of the Daughters of Albion
‘Then Oothoon waited silent all the day’
William Blake ‘Never seek to tell thy love’

1794
William Blake from Songs of Innocence and of Experience
Introduction (‘Hear the voice of the Bard!’)
The Clod and the Pebble
The Sick Rose
The Tyger
Ah! Sun-Flower
The Garden of Love
London
A Poison Tree

1796
Samuel Taylor Coleridge The Eolian Harp
Robert Burns A Red, Red Rose

1797
George Canning and John Hookham Frere Sapphics
Charlotte Smith Sonnet. On being Cautioned against Walking on a Headland Overlooking the Sea

1798
from Lyrical Ballads
Samuel Taylor Coleridge from The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere, in Seven Parts
‘It is an ancyent Marinere’
William Wordsworth Old Man Travelling
William Wordsworth Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey
Samuel Taylor Coleridge Frost at Midnight

1799
William Wordsworth from The Two-Part Prelude of 1799
‘Was it for this?’
Robert Burns from Love and Liberty. A Cantara
‘See the smoking bowl before us’

1800
William Wordsworth from Lyrical Ballads
‘A slumber did my spirit seal’
Song (‘She dwelt among th’ untrodden ways’)

1801
Robert Burns ‘Oh wert thou in the cauld blast’
Robert Burns The Fornicator. A New Song

1802
Samuel Taylor Coleridge Dejection. An Ode, Written April 4, 1802
Sir Walter Scott (editor) from Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border
Anonymous The Wife of Usher’s Well
Anonymous Thomas Rhymer
Anonymous Lord Randal
Anonymous A Lyke-Wake Dirge

1803
Anonymous The Twa Corbies
William Cowper The Snail
William Cowper The Cast-away

1804
William Blake from Milton (Preface)
‘And did those feet in ancient time’
William Blake ‘Mock on Mock on Voltaire Rousseau’

1805
William Blake The Crystal Cabinet
William Blake from Auguries of Innocence
‘To see a World in a Grain of Sand’

1806
Anonymous Lamkin

1807
William Wordsworth Composed upon Westminster Bridge
William Wordsworth Elegaic Stanzas Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle
William Wordsworth The Small Celandine
William Wordsworth Ode (Intimations of Immortality)

1808
Thomas Moore ‘Oh! blame not the bard, if he fly to the bowers’

1810
George Crabbe from The Borough
from Prisons (The Condemned Man)
from Peter Grimes (‘Alas! for Peter not an helping Hand’)
Sir Walter Scott from The Lady of the Lake
Coronach

1815
George Gordon, Lord Byron Stanzas for Music

1816
Samuel Taylor Coleridge Kubla Khan Or, A Vision in a Dream. A Fragment
John Keats On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer
Percy Bysshe Shelley To Wordsworth

1817
Samuel Taylor Coleridge from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
‘I fear thee, ancient Mariner!
John Keats ‘After dark vapours have oppress’d our plains’

1818
John Keats from Endymion
‘But there are Richer entanglements’
Percy Bysshe Shelley Ozymandias
Sir Walter Scott from The Heart of Mid-Lothian
‘Proud Maisie is in the wood’

1819
Sir Walter Scott from The Bride of Lammermoor
(Lucy Ashton’s song)
George Crabbe from Tales of the Hall
from Delay has Danger (‘Three weeks had past, and Richard rambles now’)
William Blake To the Accuser Who is the God of This World
Percy Bysshe Shelley from The Mask of Anarchy
‘As I lay asleep in Italy’
George Gordon, Lord Byron from Don Juan
from Canto I (Juan’s Puberty)
from Canto II (The Shipwreck)
John Keats The Eve of St. Agnes
John Keats Ode to a Nightingale
John Keats Ode on a Grecian Urn
John Keats To Autumn
John Keats Ode on Melancholy
John Keats ‘Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art -‘

1820
John Keats La Belle Dame sans Merci. A Ballad
Percy Bysshe Shelley Ode to the West Wind
Percy Bysshe Shelley from The Sensitive-Plant
‘Whether the Sensitive-plant, or that’

1821
Percy Bysshe Shelley from Adonais
‘The One remains, the many change and pass’

1822
George Gordon, Lord Byron from The Vision of Judgment
‘Saint Peter sat by the celestial gate’

1823
George Gordon, Lord Byron Aristomenes. Canto First

1824
George Gordon, Lord Byron January 22nd 1824. Messalonghi. On This Day I Complete My Thirty Sixth Year
George Gordon, Lord Byron ‘Remember Thee, Remember Thee!’
Percy Bysshe Shelley To Jane. The Invitation
Percy Bysshe Shelley from Julian and Maddalo. A Conversation
‘I rode one evening with Count Maddalo’
Percy Bysshe Shelley from The Triumph of Life
‘As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay’
Caroline Oliphant, Baroness Nairne The Laird o’ Cockpen
Caroline Oliphant, Baroness Nairne The Land o’ the Leal

1826
Anonymous (A Metrical Adage)
Anonymous Tweed and Till
Anonymous (A Rhyme from Lincolnshire)

1827
Winthrop Mackworth Praed Good-night to the Season

1828
Thomas Hood Death in the Kitchen
Samuel Taylor Coleridge Duty Surviving Self-Love

1829
Felicia Dorothea Hemans Casabianca
Dorothy Wordsworth Floating Island
Laetitia Elizabeth Landon Lines of Life
Laetitia Elizabeth Landon Revenge
Thomas Love Peacock The War-Song of Dinas Vawr
Winthrop Mackworth Praed Arrivals at a Watering Place

1830
George Gordon, Lord Byron ‘So, we’ll go no more a roving’

1831
Walter Savage Landor‘Past ruin’d Ilion Helen lives’
Walter Savage Landor Dirce
Walter Savage Landor On Seeing a Hair of Lucrezia Borgia

1832
George Gordon, Lord Byron Lines on Hearing That Lady Byron was Ill

1833
Hartley Coleridge ‘Long time a child, and still a child, when years’

1834
Samuel Taylor Coleridge The Knight’s Tomb

1835
John Clare The Nightingales Nest
John Clare The Sky Lark
John Clare Mist in the Meadows
John Clare Sand Martin
George Darley from Nepenthe
‘Hurry me Nymphs!’

1836
John Henry Newman The Pillar of the Cloud

1837
George Darley The Mermaidens’ Vesper-Hymn
John Clare ‘I found a ball of grass among the hay’
John Clare ‘The old pond full of flags and fenced around’
John Clare from The Badger
‘When midnight comes a host of dogs and men’

1838
Leigh Hunt from The Fish, the Man, and the Spirit
To Fish
A Fish Answers

1839
Thomas Hood Sonnet to Vauxhall

1842
Robert Browning My Last Duchess
Robert Browning from Waring
‘What’s become of Waring’
Alfred, Lord Tennyson Ulysses
Elizabeth Barrett Browning Grief

1844
William Barnes The Clote

1845
William WordsworthThe Simplon Pass
Thomas Hood Stanzas (‘Farewell, Life! My senses swim’)
Robert Browning The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church

1846
Edward Lear from A Book of Nonsense
‘There was an Old Man with a beard’
‘There was an Old Person of Basing’
‘There was an Old Man of Whitehaven’
Emily Jane Bronte ‘The night is darkening round me’
Emily Jane Bronte ‘Fall leaves fall die flowers away’
Emily Jane Bronte ‘All hushed and still within the house’
Emily Jane Bronte Remembrance
James Clarence Mangan Siberia

1847
Alred, Lord Tennyson from The Princess
‘Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white’
‘Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height’

1848
John Clare ‘I am’

1849
Walter Savage Landor ‘I strove with none, for none was worth my strife’
Matthew Arnold from Resignation. To Fausta
(‘He sees the gentle stir of birth’)

1850
Emily Jane Bronte and Charlotte Bronte The Visionary
Alfred, Lord Tennyson from In Memoriam A.H.H.
II. ‘Old Yew, which graspest at the stones’
VII. ‘Dark house, by which once more I stand’
XI. ‘Calm is the morn without a sound’
LVI. ‘”So careful of the type?” but no’
CXV. ‘Now fades the last long streak of snow’
Thomas Lovell Beddoes from Death’s Jest Book, or the Fool’s Tragedy
‘And what’s your tune?’

1851
Thomas Lovell Beddoes from The Last Man
A Crocodile
A Lake

1852
Matthew Arnold To Marguerite – Continued

1853
Walter Savage Landor ‘Our youth was happy: why repine’
Walter Savage Landor Separation

1854
James Henry ‘Another and another and another’
James Henry ‘The son’s a poor, wretched, unfortunate creature’

1855
Robert Browning Love in a Life
Robert Browning How It Strikes a Contemporary
Robert Browning Memorabilia
Robert Browning Two in the Campagna

1856
Coventry Patmore from Victories of Love, Book 1, 2
‘He that but once too nearly hears’

1858
Arthur Hugh Clough from Amours de Voyage (Canto II)
V. ‘Yes, we are fighting at last, it appears’
VII. ‘So, I have seen a man killed!’
VIII. ‘Only think, dearest Louisa’
IX. ‘It is most curious to see what a power’
X. ‘I am in love, meantime, you think’

1859
Edward Fitzgerald from Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
‘Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night’
William Barnes My Orcha’d in Linden Lea
William Barnes False Friends-like

1860
Alfred, Lord Tennyson Tithonus

1861
Dante Gabriel Rossetti/Dante Sestina: of the Lady Pietra degli Scrovigni
Adelaide Anne Procter Envy

1862
Christina Rossetti May
Christina Rossetti Song (‘When I am dead, my dearest’)
Christina Rossetti Winter: My Secret
Elizabeth Barrett Browning Lord Walter’s Wife
Elizabeth Barrett Browning A Musical Instrument
George Meredith from Modern Love
I. ‘By this he knew she wept with waking eyes’
XVII. ‘At dinner she is hostess, I am host’
XXXIV. ‘Madam would speak with me. So now it comes’
L. ‘Thus piteously Love closed what he begat’
Arthur Hugh Clough The Latest Decalogue
Algernon Charles Swinburne Free Thought
William Barnes Leaves-a-Vallèn
William Barnes The Turnstile

1863
Walter Savage Landor Memory
Dante Gabriel Rossetti Sudden Light

1864
Robert Browning Youth and Art
John Clare ‘The thunder mutters louder and more loud’

1865
Lewis Carroll from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
‘”You are old, Father William,” the young man said’
‘They told me you had been to her’
George Eliot In a London Drawingroom
Arthur Hugh Clough from Dipsychus
‘”There is no God,” the wicked saith’

1866
Algernon Charles Swinburne Itylus
Algernon Charles Swinburne from Sapphics
‘All the night sleep came not upon my eyelids’
Christina Rossetti The Queen of Hearts
Christina Rossetti ‘What Would I Give’

1867
Matthew Arnold Dover Beach
Matthew Arnold Growing Old
Dora Greenwell A Scherzo. (A Shy Person’s Wishes)

1868
Charles Turner On a Vase of Gold-Fish
Mortimer Collins Winter in Brighton

1869
Matthew Arnold ‘Below the surface-stream, shallow and light’

1870
Augusta Webster from A Castaway
‘Poor little diary, with its simple thoughts’
Dante Gabriel Rossetti A Match with the Moon
Dante Gabriel Rossetti The Woodspurge

1871
Edward Lear ‘There was an old man who screamed out’
Edward Lear The Owl and the Pussy-Cat

1872
Lewis Carroll from Through the Looking-Glass
‘In winter, when the fields are white‘
Christina Rossetti from Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book
‘Dead in the cold, a song-singing thrush’
‘A city plum is not a plum’
‘If a pig wore a wig’
‘I caught a little ladybird’
Robert Browning (Rhyme for a Child Viewing a Naked Venus)

1875
Christina Rossetti By the Sea

1877
Coventry Patmore Magna est Veritas
Gerard Manley Hopkins The Windhover: To Christ our Lord
Gerard Manley Hopkins Pied Beauty
Gerard Manley Hopkins from The Wreck of the Deutschland
‘Thou mastering me’

1878
Algernon Charles Swinburne A Forsaken Garden
Algernon Charles Swinburne A Vision of Spring in Winter

1880
Alfred, Lord Tennyson Rizpah
Charles Turner Letty’s Globe

1881
Joseph Skipsey ‘Get Up!’
Christina Rossetti ‘Summer is Ended’
Gerard Manley Hopkins Inversnaid
Gerard Manley Hopkins ‘As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame’
Robert Louis Stevenson from Treasure Island
Pirate Ditty
Robert Louis Stevenson ‘Last night we had a thunderstorm in style’

1882
William Allingham ‘Everything passes and vanishes’

1884
Amy Levy Epitaph (On a Commonplace Person Who Died in Bed)

1885
Alfred, Lord Tennyson To E. FitzGerald
Gerard Manley Hopkins Spelt from Sibyl’s Leaves
Gerard Manley Hopkins ‘I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day’

1886
Dante Gabriel Rossetti from A Trip to Paris and Belgium
I. from London to Folkestone
XVI. Antwerp to Ghent

1887
Anonymous Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye
Robert Louis Stevenson To Mrs Will H. Low
Robert Louis Stevenson ‘My house, I say. But hark to the sunny doves’
May Kendall Lay of the Trilobite

1888
A. Mary F. Robinson Neurasthenia
W. E. Henley from In Hospital
II. Waiting
III. Interior

1889
Amy Levy A Ballade of Religion and Marriage
W. B. Yeats Down by the Salley Gardens

1891
William Morris Pomona

1892
Rudyard Kipling Danny Deever
Rudyard Kipling Mandalay
W. B. Yeats The Sorrow of Love
Arthur Symons At the Cavour

1894
John Davidson Thirty Bob a Week

1895
Robert Louis Stevenson To S. R. Crockett
Alice Meynell Cradle-Song at Twilight
Alice Meynell Parentage
May Probyn Triolets
Tête-à-Tête
Masquerading
A Mésalliance

1895
Mary E. Coleridge An Insincere Wish Addressed to a Beggar
Christina Rossetti Promises like Pie-crust
Ernest Dowson Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam
A. E. Housman from A Shropshire Lad
XII. ‘When I watch the living meet’
XL. ‘Into my heart an air that kills’
LII. ‘Far in a western brookland’
John Davidson A Northern Suburb

1897
Arthur Symons White Heliotrope
Rudyard Kipling Recessional

1898
Oscar Wilde from The Ballad of Reading Gaol
‘He did not wear his scarlet coat’
W. E. Henley To W. R.
Thomas Hardy Neutral Tones
Thomas Hardy Thoughts of Phena

1900
Thomas Hardy The Darkling Thrush

1906
Walter De La Mare The Birthnight
Walter De La Mare Autumn
Walter De La Mare Napoleon

1908
Mary E. Coleridge No Newspapers
Michael Field (Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper) The Mummy Invokes His Soul

1909
John Davidson Snow
J. M. Synge On an Island

1910
J. M. Synge The ‘Mergency Man

1911
W. H. Davies Sheep

1912
Thomas Hardy The Convergence of the Twain
T. E. Hulme Autumn
T. E. Hulme Image
Ezra Pound The Return

1913
Ezra Pound In a Station of the Metro

1914
H. D. (Hilda Doolittle) Oread
Thomas Hardy from Poems of 1912-13
The Walk
The Voice
After a Journey
At Castle Boterel
W. B. Yeats The Cold Heaven
W. B. Yeats The Magi
Charlotte Mew Fame

1915
Ezra Pound The Gypsy
Ezra Pound/Rihaku from Cathay
The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter
Lament of the Frontier Guard
Rupert Brooke Peace
Rupert Brooke Heaven

1916
D. H. Lawrence Sorrow
Charles Hamilton Sorley ‘When you see millions of the mouthless dead’
Edward Thomas Cock-Crow
Edward Thomas Aspens
Anna Wickham The Fired Pot
Charlotte Mew A quoi bon dire
Charlotte Mew The Quiet House

1917
T. S. Eliot The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
T. S. Eliot Aunt Helen
Isaac Rosenberg Break of Day in the Trenches
Isaac Rosenberg August 1914
Isaac Rosenberg ‘A worm fed on the heart of Corinth’
Thomas Hardy During Wind and Rain
Edward Thomas Old Man
Edward Thomas Tall Nettles
Edward Thomas Blenheim Oranges
Edward Thomas Rain

1918
Wilfred Owen Futility
Wilfred Owen Anthem for Doomed Youth
Wilfred Owen The Send-Off
Wilfed Owen Maundy Thursday
Siegfried Sassoon Base Details
Siegfried Sassoon The General

1919
Siegfried Sassoon Everyone Sang
Ivor Gurney To His Love
Ivor Gurney The Silent One
Rudyard Kipling from Epitaphs of War, 1914-18
A Servant
A Son
The Coward
The Refined Man
Common Form
Rudyard Kipling Gethsemane
Laurence Binyon For the Fallen (September 1914)
W. B. Yeats The Wild Swans at Coole
T. S. Eliot Sweeney Among the Nightingales
Ezra Pound from Homage to Sextus Propertius
VI. ‘When, when, and whenever death closes our eyelids’

1920
Ezra Pound from Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
II. ‘The age demanded an image’
IV. ‘These fought in any case’
V. ‘There died a myriad’
W. B. Yeats Easter, 1916
T. S. Eliot Gerontion
A. E. Housman from Last Poems
XII. ‘The laws of God, the laws of man’
XXXIII. ‘When the eye of day is shut’
XXXVII. Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries
XL. ‘Tell me not here, it needs not saying’
A. E. Housman ‘It is a fearful thing to be’

1922
T. S. Eliot from The Waste Land
I. The Burial of the Dead
IV. Death by Water
Ivor Gurney Possessions
Ivor Gurney The High Hills

1923
D. H. Lawrence Medlars and Sorb-Apples
D. H. Lawrence The Mosquito
D. H. Lawrence The Blue Jay
Hilaire Belloc On a General Election
Hilaire Belloc Ballade of Hell and of Mrs Roebeck
W. B. Yeats Leda and the Swan

1925
Robert Graves Love Without Hope
Robert Bridges To Francis Jammes
Edmund Blunden The Midnight Skaters
Basil Bunting from Villon
‘Remember, imbeciles and wits’
Edwin Muir Childhood
Hugh Macdiarmid from Sangschaw
The Watergaw
The Eemis Stane

1926
Hugh Macdiarmid Empty Vessel
Hugh Macdiarmid from A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle
‘O wha’s the bride that carries the bunch?’

1927
James Joyce from Pomes Penyeach
Bahnhofstrasse

1928
Thomas Hardy Lying Awake
Austin Clarke The Planter’s Daughter
W. B. Yeats Sailing to Byzantium
W. B. Yeats from Meditations in Time of Civil War
V. The Road at My Door
VI. The State’s Nest by My Window
W. B. Yeats Among School Children
W.H. Auden ‘Taller to-day, we remember similar evenings’

1929
D. H. Lawrence The Mosquito Knows
D. H. Lawrence To Women, As Far As I’m Concerned
D. H. Lawrence Innocent England
E. C. Bentley (Clerihews)
‘George the Third’
‘Nell’
Edmund Blunden Report on Experience
Robert Graves Sick Love
Robert Graves Warning to Children
Robert Graves It Was All Very Tidy

1930
W. H. Auden ‘This lunar beauty’
T. S. Eliot Marina

1932
Basil Bunting from Chomei at Toyama
‘I have been noting events forty years’
D. H. Lawrence Bavarian Gentians

1933
Rudyard Kipling The Bonfires
W. B. Yeats In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz
Dylan Thomas The force that through the green fuse

1934
Hugh Macdiarmid from On a Raised Beach
‘All is lithogenesis – or lochia’

1935
William Empson This Last Pain
William Empson Homage to the British Museum
Louis Macneice Snow
William Soutar The Tryst

1936
W. H. Auden ‘Out on the lawn I lie in bed’
W. H. Auden ‘Now the leaves are falling fast’
Elizabeth Daryush Still-Life
Laura Riding The Wind Suffers
Patrick Kavanagh Inniskeen Road: July Evening
A. E. Housman from More Poems
XXIII. ‘Crossing alone the nighted ferry’
XXXI. ‘Because I liked you better’

1937
A. E. Housman ‘Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists?’
John Betjeman The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel
David Jones from In Parenthesis
from Part 3 ‘And the deepened stillness’
from Part 7 ‘But sweet sister death’

1938
Austin Clarke The Straying Student
Robert Graves To Evoke Posterity
Elizabeth Daryush ‘Children of wealth in your warm nursery’
Louis Macneice The Sunlight on the Garden

1939
W. B. Yeats Long-legged Fly
W. H. Auden In Memory of W. B. Yeats
Louis Macneice from Autumn Journal
I. ‘Close and slow, summer is ending in Hampshire’
XV. ‘Shelley and jazz and lieder and love and hymn-tunes’

1940
W. H. Auden Musée des Beaux Arts
John Betjeman Pot-Pourri from a Surrey Garden
William Empson Missing Dates
William Empson Aubade

1941
Louis Macneice Meeting Point
Louis Macneice Autobiography

1942
T. S. Eliot from Little Gidding
II. ‘Ash on an old man’s sleeve’
Alun Lewis Raiders’ Dawn
Norman Cameron Green, Green is El Aghir
Stevie Smith Bog-Face
Stevie Smith Dirge
Patrick Kavanagh from The Great Hunger
from I. ‘Clay is the word and clay is the flesh’
III. ‘Poor Paddy Maquire, a fourteen-hour day’
from XI. ‘The cards are shuffled and the deck’
from XII. ‘The fields were bleached white’

1943
Henry Reed Judging Distances
David Gascoyne Snow in Europe
David Gascoyne A Wartime Dawn
Keith Douglas Desert Flowers

1944
H. D. (Hilda Doolittle) from The Walls Do Not Fall
I. ‘An incident here and there’
Sorley Maclean Hallaig
Laurence Binyon Winter Sunrise
Laurence Binyon The Burning of the Leaves
Keith Douglas Vergissmeinnicht

1945
Robert Graves To Juan at the Winter Solstice
Dylan Thomas Poem in October
W. H. Auden from The Sea and the Mirror
Miranda
Ruth Pitter But for Lust
William Empson Let It Go

1946
Samuel Beckett Saint-Lô
Keith Douglas How to Kill

1949
Edwin Muir the Interrogation

1950
Marion Angus Alas! Poor Queen
Stevie Smith Pad, Pad

1951
Dylan Thomas Over Sir John’s Hill

1952
Dylan Thomas Do not go gentle into that good night
W. H. Auden The Fall of Rome
W. H. Auden The Shield of Achilles

1954
John Betjeman Devonshire Street W.1
Robert Garioch Elegy
Thom Gunn The Wound
Philip Larkin At Grass

1955
Norman Maccaig Summer Farm

1956
Edwin Muir The Horses

1957
Ted Hughes The Thought-Fox
Louis Macneice House on a Cliff
Stevie Smith Not Waving But Drowning
Stevie Smith Magna est Veritas

1959
Geoffrey Hill A Pastoral

1960
Ted Hughes Pike
Patrick Kavanagh Epic
Patrick Kavanagh Come Dance with Kitty Stobling
Patrick Kavanagh The Hospital

1961
R. S. Thomas Here
Roy Fisher from City
from By the Pond
Toyland
Thom Gunn In Santa Maria del Popolo
Thom Gunn My Sad Captains

1962
Malcolm Lowry (Strange Type)
Christopher Logue/Homer from Patrocleia
(Apollo Strikes Patroclus)

1963
Charles Tomlinson The Picture of J. T. in a Prospect of Stone
R. S. Thomas On the Farm
Louis Macneice Soap Suds
Louis Macneice The Taxis
Austin Clarke Martha Blake at Fifty-One

1964
Philip Larkin Mr Bleaney
Philip Larkin Here
Philip Larkin Days
Philip Larkin Afternoons
Donald Davie The Hill Field

1965
Sylvia Plath Sheep in Fog
Sylvia Plath The Arrival of the Bee Box
Sylvia Plath Edge

1966
Basil Bunting from Briggflatts
I. ‘Brag, sweet tenor bull’
R. S. Thomas Pietà
R. S. Thomas Gifts
Seamus Heaney Personal Helicon

1967
Ted Hughes Thistles
Ted Hughes Full Moon and Little Frieda
John Montague from A Chosen Light
II. rue Daguerre
George Theiner/Miroslav Holub The Fly

1968
Geoffrey Hill Ovid in the Third Reich
Geoffrey Hill September Song
Roy Fisher As He Came Near Death
Roy Fisher The Memorial Fountain

1969
Michael Longley Persephone
Douglas Dunn A Removal from Terry Street
Douglas Dunn On Roofs of Terry Street
Norman Maccaig Wild Oats
Iain Crichton Smith Shall Gaelic Die?

1970
W. S. Graham Malcolm Mooney’s Land
Ian Hamilton The Visit
Ian Hamilton Newscast
Tom Leonard from Unrelated Incidents
3. ‘this is thi’
Ted Hughes from Crow
A Childish Prank

1971
Thom Gunn Moly
Geoffrey Hill from Mercian Hymns
I. ‘King of the perennial holly-graves’
VI. ‘The princes of Mercia were badger and raven’
VII. ‘Gasholders, russet among fields’
XXVII. ‘Now when King Offa was alive and dead’
George Mackay Brown Kirkyard

1972
Stevie Smith Scorpion
Charles Tomlinson Stone Speech
Derek Mahon An Image from Beckett
Seamus Heaney The Tollund Man
Seamus Heaney Broagh
Douglas Dunn Modern Love
Éilean Ní Chuilleanáin Swineherd
Éilean Ní Chuilleanáin The Second Voyage

1973
Thomas Kinsella Hen Woman
Thomas Kinsella Ancestor
Michael Longley Wounds
Paul Muldoon Wind and Tree

1974
Philip Larkin This Be the Verse
Philip Larkin Money
Philip Larkin from Livings
II. ‘Seventy feet down’
Philip Larkin The Explosion
Padraic Fallon A Bit of Brass

1975
Seamus Heaney from Singing School
6. Exposure
Derek Mahon The Snow Party
Derek Mahon A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford
D. J. Enright Remembrance Sunday
John Fuller Wild Raspberries

1976
Michael Longley Man Lying on a Wall
Elma Mitchell Thoughts after Ruskin
Thom Gunn The Idea of Trust

1977
Donald Davie from In the Stopping Train
‘I have got into the slow train’
Norman Maccaig Notations of Ten Summer Minutes
W. S. Graham Lines on Roger Hilton’s Watch
Robert Garioch The Maple and the Pine

1978
Geoffrey Hill from An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in England
9. The Laurel Axe
12. The Eve of St Mark
Thomas Kinsella Tao and Unfitness at Inistiogue on the River Nore
James Fenton In a Notebook
Jeffrey Wainwright 1815

1979
Craig Raine A Martian Sends a Postcard Home
Christopher Reid Baldanders
Ted Hughes February 17th
Seamus Heaney The Strand at Lough Beg
Michael Longley from Wreaths
The Linen Workers

1980
Tom Paulin Where Art is a Midwife
Paul Muldoon Why Brownlee Left
Paul Muldoon Anseo
Paul Durcan Tullynoe: Tête-à-Tête in the Parish Priest’s Parlour
Paul Durcan The Death by Heroin of Sid Vicious

1981
James Fenton A German Requiem
Tony Harrison The Earthen Lot
Derek Mahon Courtyards in Delft

1983
Paul Muldoon Quoof
Paul Muldoon The Frog
Tom Paulin Desertmartin

1984
Seamus Heaney Widgeon
Seamus Heaney from Station Island
VII. ‘I had come to the edge of the water’
Douglas Dunn from Elegies
The Sundial

1985Derek Mahon Antarctica
John Agard Listen to Mr Oxford don

1987
Peter Didsbury The Hailstone
Paul Muldoon Something Else
Ciaran Carson Dresden
Eavan Boland Self-Portrait on a Summer Evening

1988
Charles Causley Eden Rock
Edwin Morgan The Dowser
Norman Maccaig Chauvinist

1989
Ted Hughes Telegraph Wires

1990
Ken Smith Writing in Prison
Ciaran Carson Belfast Confetti
Nuala Níi Dhomhnaill (trans. Paul Muldoon) The Language Issue
Eavan Boland The Black Lace Fan My Mother Gave Me

1991
Seamus Heaney from Lightenings
VIII. ‘The annals say: when the monks of Clonmacnoise’
Michael Longley The Butchers

1992
Denise Riley A Misremembered Lyric
Thom Gunn The Hug
Thom Gunn The Reassurance

1994
Hugo Williams Prayer
Hugo Williams Last Poem
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin Studying the Language
Christopher Reid/Ovid Stories and Bones

Acknowledgements
Index of Poets
Index of First lines
Index of Titles