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.

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