The Oxford book of short poems

Introduction

Anonymous (13th and 14th centuries) / 'Fowls in the frith'

'Lord, Thou Clèpedest me'

'When I see on Rood'

'Why have you no ruth?'

Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?-1400) / Roundel ('Now welcome, summer') from The Parliament of Fowls

Unto Adam, His Own Scrivèyn

Roundel ('Since I from Love escapèd am') from Merciless Beauty

Anonymous (15th and early 16th centuries) / 'I shall say what inordinate love is'

'Onmes gentes plaudite!'

'Blessed Mary'

'Peace maketh plenty'

'Hail, Queen of Heaven'

'I have been a foster'

'Western wind'

John Skelton (1460?-1529) / 'Though ye suppose'

Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) / 'Madam, withouten many words'

'Who hath heard'

'The enemy of life'

'Sighs are my food'

'Lux, my fair falcon'

'Throughout the world'

William Baldwin (c.1515-1563) / The Spouse to the Younglings

Anonymous (c.1550) / 'Thou sleepest fast'

George Turbervile (1540?-1610) / To an Old Gentlewoman that Painted Her Face

Sir Edward Dyer (c.1545-1607) / 'The lowest trees have tops'

Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford (1550-1604) / Epigram ('Were I a king')

Sir Walter Ralegh (1552?-1618) / To His Son

'What is our life?'

'Even such is time'

Sir Philip Sidney (1554- 1586) / 'Sleep, baby mine, Desire'

'Like those sick folks'

Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke (1554-1628) / 'Whenas man's life'

George Peele (1558?-1597) / Bathsabe's Song ('Hot sun, cool fire') from David and Bethsabe

George Chapman (1559?-1634) / Bridal Song ('Now, Sleep, bind fast') from The Masque of the Middle Temple and Lincoln's Inn

Anonymous (printed 1599-1610) / 'Thyrsis, sleepest thou?'

'A sparrow-hawk proud'

'Thule'

'My love in her attire'

'Since first I saw your face'

'Love me not'

'Sweet, let me go!'

'He that hath no mistress'

'Sweet Cupid, ripen her desire'

Sir John Harington (1561-1612) / To His Wife, for Striking Her Dog

William Shakespeare(1564-1616) / Song ('O mistress mine') from Twelfth Night

Song ('When daffodils begin to peer') from The Winter's Tale

song ('Jog on, jog on') from The Winter's Tale

Song ('Full fathom five') from The Tempest

Song ('The master, the swabber, the boatswain and I') from The Tempest

Song ('Where the bee sucks') from The Tempest

John Davies of Hereford (1566-1601) / A Remembrance of My Friend Mr. Thomas Morley

Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex (1566-1601) / 'Happy were he'

Thomas Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex (1566-1601) / 'Happy were he'

Thomas Bastard (1566-1618) / De Puero Balbutiente

Thomas Nashe (1567-1601) / 'Fair summer droops'

Thomas Campion (1567-1620) / 'When thou must home'

'Never weather-beaten sail' 'Thrice toss these oaken ashes in the air'

'Thus I resolve'

'Sleep, angry beauty'

Think'st thou to seduce me then'

Thomas Middleton (1570?-1627) / Song ('In a maiden-time professed') from The Witch

Samuel Rowland (1570?-1630?) / Melancholy Conceit

The Faithful Shepherdess

Song ('Care-charming sleep') from The Tragedy of Valentinian

John Fletcher with Francis Beaumont (1584-

Robert Herrick (1591-1674) / Discontents in Devon

Dreams

Impossibilities, to His Friend

Upon Himself

The Coming of Good Luck

The Silken Snake

To Daisies, Not to Shut So Soon

Upon Her Feet

His Prayer to Ben Jonson

To Fortune

Lovers, How They Come and Part

Upon Julia's Clothes

Kisses Loathsome

To His Book

His Desire

No Coming to God without Christ

Francis Quarles (1592-1644) / Of Common Devotion

On Zacchaeus

On Change of Weathers

Henry King (1592-1669) / Sic Vita

Sonnet ("Go, thou that vainly')

William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle (1592-1676) / Song ('We'll, placed in Love's triumphant chariot high') from The Humorous Lovers

Love's Epitaph

George Herbert (1593-1633) / Sin

Church Music

Church Lock and Key

Trinity Sunday

Bitter-Sweet

A Wreath

Thomas Carew (1595-1639) / Lips and Eyes

A Lady's Prayer to Cupid

James Shirley (1596-1666) / Song to the Masquers ('Why do you dwell so long in clouds') from The Triumph of Peace

Fie on Love

Edward May (fl. 1633) / On a Young Man and an Old Man

William Strode (1602-1645) / On a Gentlewoman Walking in the Snow

Mildmay Fane, Earl of Westmorland (1602-1665) / Occasioned by Seeing a Walk of Bay Trees

In Praise of Fidelia

In Obitum Ben. Jons.

Thomas Randolph (1605-1635) / 'Come from thy palace' from The Conceited Pedlar

A Song ('Music, thou queen of souls')

'From witty men and mad'

Sir William Davenant (1606-1668) / Song ('The lark now leaves his watery nest')

Sir William Berkeley (1606?-1677) / Song ('Where did you borrow that last sigh') from The Lost Lady

Edmund Waller (1606-1687) / To One Married to an Old Man

To Chloris, Upon a Favour Received

Sir Richard Fanshawe (1608-1666) / Nymph's Song ('Let us use it whilst we may') from Il Pastor Fido

John Milton (1608-1674) / Song ('O'er the smooth enamelled green') from Arcades

Clement Barksdale (1609-1687) / To My Nephew, J.B.

Richard Crashaw (1612?-1649) / On the Miracle of Multiplied Loaves

To the Infant Martyrs

On the Miracle of Loaves

On the Blessed Virgin's Bashfulness

On Our Crucified Lord, Naked and Bloody

James Graham, Marquis of Montrose (1612-1650) / On Himself, Upon Hearing What Was His Sentence

Anne Bradstreet (1612?-1672) / To My Dear and Loving Husband

Robert Heath (fl. 1650) / Seeing her Dancing

Sir John Denham (1615-1669) / Preface to the Progress of Learning

George Daniel (1616-1657) / One Desiring me to Read, but Slept It Out, Wakening

Richard Lovelace (1618-1658) / To Lucasta, Going to the Wars

Song ('In mine own monument I lie')

Sir Edward Sherburne (1618-1702) / The Dream

'The proud Egyptian queen'

Richard Flecknoe (?-1678) / Invocation of Silence

Henry Vaughan (1622-1695) / The Eclipse

Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1624-1674) / Soul and Body

Of the Theme of Love

John Hall (1627-1656) / Song ('Distil not poison in mine ears')

John Bunyan (1628-1688) / Song of the Shepherd Boy from The Pilgrim's Progress

Upon the Snail

Katherine Philips (1631-1664) / Song ("'Tis true our life is but a long dis-ease")

John Dryden (1631-1700) / Mercury's Song ('Fair Iris I love') from Amphitryon

Momus' Song to Mars ('Thy sword within the scabbard keep') from The Secular Masque

Chorus to the Gods ('all, all of a piece throughout') from The Secular Masque

Philip Pain (?-1666) / Meditation 8

Thomas Traherne (1637-1674) / Christian Ethics

Thomas Flatman (1637-1688) / Nudus Redibo

Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset (1638-1706) / On Dorinda

Philip Ayres (1638-1712) / Ever Present

Anonymous (late 17th century) / The Old Man's Complaint

A Thought on Human Life.

John Crowne (1640?-1703?) / Song ('Kind lovers, love on') from Calisto

Thomas Rymer (1641-1713) / To

- ('Let those with cost')

John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647-1680) / To My More than Meritorious Wife

Grecian Kindness

Song ('Leave this gaudy gilded stage')

A Rodomontade on His Cruel Mistress

Henry Aldrich (1647-1710) / A Catch ('If all be true')

Nahum Tate (1652-1715) / The Choice

Jane Barker (fl. 1688) / To Her Lover's Complaint

Sir George Etherege (1653-1691) / Song ('Ladies, though to your conquering eyes') from The comical revenge

Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea (1661?-1720) / On Myself

A Song ('The nymph in vain')

William Walsh (1663-1708) / To His False Mistress

Phillis's Resolution

Matthew Prior (1664-1721) / Les Estreines

Adriani Morientis ad Animam Suam

The Lady Who Offers Her Looking-Glass to Venus

Democritus and Heraclitus

A Letter to the Honourable Lady, Miss Margaret Cavendish-Holles-Harley

The Insatiable Priest

George Granville, Lord Lansdowne (1667-1735) / 'Impatient with desire'

Cloe

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) / Shall I Repine?

William Congreve (1670-1729) / Song ('See, see, she wakes')

Song ('Pious Selinda')

Lesbia

Song ('False though she be')

Jonathan Smedley (1671-1729?) / Fancy

Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729) / Trim's Song: The Fair Kitchen-Maid from The Funeral

Esther Johnson (1681-1728) / 'If it be true'

Jealousy

John Gay (1685-1732) / Song ('Can love be controlled by advice?') from The Beggar's Opera

Song ('Before the barn-door crowing') from The Beggar's Opera

Song('Think of dress in every light') from Achilles

Aaron Hill (1685-1750) / Written on a Window

Modesty

Alexander Pope (1688-1744) / On Dullness

On a Lady Who p-ssed at the Tragedy of Cato

Upon a Girl of Seven Years Old

A Hymn, Written in Windsor Forest

Inscriptio

Epigram ('When other ladies to the shades go down')

To Mr. C, St. James's Place, London, October 22nd

Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog which I Gave to His Royal Highness

On the Benefactions in the Late Frost, 1740

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) / The Lady's Resolve

Samuel Wesley (1691-1739) / The Monument

Anonymous (attr. Samuel Wesley) / On the Setting Up Mr Butler's Monument in Westminster Abbey

Thomas Fitzgerald (1695?-1752) / Upon an Ingenious Friend, Over-Vain

Robert Dodsley (1703-1764) / Song ('Man's a poor deluded bubble')

William Pattison (1706-1727) / Ad Coelum

John Wigson (c.1711-?) / On the Death of Squire Christopher, a Remarkably Fat Sportsman

William Shenstone (1714-1763) / Lines Written on a Window at The Leasowes at a Time of Very Deep Snow

Thomas Gray (1716-1771) / Tophet

William Collins (1721-1759) / Ode: Written in the Beginning of the Year 1746

Sonnet ('When Phoebe formed a wanton smile')

Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774) / 'O Memory, thou fond deceiver' from The Captivity

William Cowper (1731-1800) / A Comparison

Sir William Jones (1746-1794) / A Moral Tetrastich: from the Persian

Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) / 'If wishing for the mystic joys of love'

George Crabbe (1754-1832) / My Birthday

William Blake (1757-1827) / 'The Angel that presided'

Infant Joy

Infant Sorrow

The Clod and the Pebble

The Sick Rose

Eternity

'Mock on, mock on'

'an old maid early'

The Question Answered

'Great things are done'

To the Accuser Who Is the God of this World

Robert Burns (1759-1796) / Grace at Kirkudbright

'Twa bonny lads'

On a Dog of Lord Eglinton's

Mary Lamb (1765-1847) with Charles Lamb/ Parental Recollections

Anonymous (?-19th century) / 'Says Tweed to Till'

'Oh, England'

'As I walked by my self'

'I saw a peacock'

'How many miles to Babylon?'

'My mother said'.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) / 'She dwelt among the untrodden ways'

'My heart leaps up'

To a Child: Written in Her Album

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) / 'Look no thou'

'Youth! thou wear'st to manhood now'

Samuel Taylor Coleridge 91772-1834) / A Sunset

Time, Real and Imaginary: An Allegory

Apologia Pro Vita Sua

Phantom

On Imitation

Robert Southey (1774-1843) / The Soldier's Wife: Dactylics

Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864) / 'Had we two met'

Dirce

Plays

'Ireland never was contented'

'Death stands above me'

Thomas Moore (1779-1852) / Venetian Air

An Argument: To Any Phillis or Chloe

Song ('When the heart's feeling')

To Miss

-('With woman's form')

To

-

- ('When I loved you')

Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866) / Beneath the Cypress Shade

George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) / 'So we'll go no more a-roving'

'I would to Heaven'

'Remember thee! remember thee!

Answer to

-'s Professions of Affection

'They say that Hope is happiness'

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) / A song ('Widow bird sate mourning')

The Waning Moon

Lines to a Reviewer

To

- ('Music, when soft voices die')

John Clare (1793-1864) / Field Path

Lines Written on a Very Boisterous Day in may, 1844

Solitude

Fragment ('Language has not the power')

Birds' Nests

John Keats (1795-1821) / 'This Living hand'

Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803-1849) / Song ('Strew not earth') from The Second Brother

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1849) / Letters

Days

Character

Quatrain: Poet

Water

Limits

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) / The Best

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) / All's Well

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) / 'From sorrow sorrow yet is born'

The Eagle

A Dedication

'I stood on a tower in the wet'

'Somebody being a nobody'

Frater Ave Atque Vale

Robert Browning (1812-1889) / Home Thoughts from the Sea

Meeting at Night

Parting at Morning

Among the Rocks from James Lee's Wife

'When I vexed you' from Ferishtah's Fancies

To Edward FitzGerald

Appearances

Bad Dreams

Henry Thoreau (1817-1862) / 'Light-winged Smoke, Icarian bird'

'Each more melodious note I hear'

On the Sun Coming Out in the Afternoon

'For though the eaves were rabbeted'

'They made me erect and lone'

Emily Brontë (1818-1848) / Fall, leaves, fall

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861) / Darkness

'To spend uncounted years of pain'

James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) / Sixty-Eighth Birthday

Herman Melville (1819-1891) / Monody

Fragments of a Lost Gnostic Poem of the Twelfth Century

In the Pauper's Turnip-Field

Walt Whitman (1819-1892) / Are You the New Person Drawn Toward Me?

Sometimes With One I Love

Reconciliation

A Noiseless Patient Spider

The Last Invocation

Ah Poverties, Wincings, and Sulky Retreats

Old War-Dreams

A Clear Midnight

To the Pending Year

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) / Destiny

'Below the surface-stream'

William Cory (1823-1892) / Heraclitus

William Allingham (1824-1889) / A Mill

Coventry Patmore (1825-1896) / The Revelation

The Spirit's Epochs

Constancy Rewarded

Magna Est Veritas

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) / Aspecta Medusa

Memory

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) / 'I like a look of agony'

'I'm Nobody!'

'They say that time assuages'

'It dropped so low'

'I stepped from plank to plank'

'The stimulus beyond the grave'

'We miss a kinsman more'

'It sounded as if the streets were running'

'Drowning is not so pitiful'

'My life closed twice before its close'

Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) / What Would I Give?

Edward Bulwer, Earl of Lytton (1831-1891) / The Last Wish

John Warren, Lord de Tabley (1835-1895) / The Power of Interval

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) / 'I Look Into My Glass'

A Thunderstorm in Town

The Peace-Offering

The Pink Frock

On Sturminster Foot-Bridge (Onomatopoeic)

The Nettles

The Fallow Deer at the Lonely House

The Lodging-House Fuchsias.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) / Heaven-Haven: A Nun takes the Veil

Pied Beauty

Peace

'How looks the night?'

'Repeat that, repeat'

'Not of all my eyes see'

'She schools the flighty pupils of her eyes'

The Rainbow

Robert Bridges (1844-1930) / Triolet ('When first we met')

April 1885

Alice Meynell (1847-1922) / 'I am the Way'

The Rainy Summer

Maternity

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) / 'I am a hunchback'

Francis Coutts (1852-1923) / On a Wife

Francis William Bourdillon (1952-1921) / The Night Has a Thousand Eyes

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) / Symphony in Yellow

Francis Thompson (1859-1907) / At Lord's

Heaven and Hell

The End of It

A.E. Housman (1859-1936) / Eight o'Clock

'The night is freezing fast'

'The fairies break their dances'

Revolution

'Stars, I have seen them fall'

'Crossing alone the nighted ferry'

'Half-way, for one commandment broken'

Mary Coleridge (1861-1907) / The Nurse's Lament

'We never said farewell'

'I saw a stable'

Eden Phillpotts (1862-1960) / Miniature

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) / 'Look, you have cast out Love!' from Plain Tales from the Hills ('Lisped')

'There is a tide' from Plain Tales from the Hills ('Kidnapped')

A Dead Statesman from Epitaphs of War

W.B. Yeats (1865-1939) / All Things Can Tempt Me

Paudeen

The Cold Heaven

A Coat

A Thought from Propertius

Death

Spilt Milk

The Choice

Consolation

The Great Day

Arthur Symons (1865-1945) / Maquillage

At The Cavour

Isolation

Venice

Ernest Dowson (1867-1900) / Epigram ('Because I am idolatrous')

Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam

George Russell (AE) (1867-1935) / Outcast

Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) / Beside the Bed

Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935) / An Old Story

Exit

Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953) / The Early Morning

Discovery

The False Heart

Stephen Crane (1871-1900) / 'In the desert'

'A god in wrath'

'A man said'

J.M. Synge (1871-1909) / On a Island

Dread

W.H. Davies (1871-1940) / I Am the Poet Davies, William

The Villain

D is for Dog

All in June

Ralph Hodgson (1871-1962) / The Bells of Heaven

'Reason has moons'

Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939) / Sidera Cadentia: On the Death of Queen Victoria

Walter de la Mare (1873-1956) / Arrogance

The Spotted Flycatcher

The Owl

Crazed

Trumbull Stickney (1874-1904) / 'Sir, say no more'

G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) / Elegy in a Country Churchyard

Ecclesiates

Robert Frost (1874-1963) / In Neglect

A Patch of Old Snow

The Cow in Apple-Time

The Line-Gang

Dust of Snow

Fireflies in the Garden

The Armful

Were I in Trouble

A Mood Apart

Edward Thomas (1878-1917) / 'She had a name'

Cock-Crow

Thaw

Tall Nettles

'By the ford'

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) / Cool Tombs

Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931) / The Leaden-Eyed

What the Moon Saw

Factory Windows Are Always Broken

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) / Anecdote of the Jar

The Death of a Soldier

Men Made Out of Words

John Freeman (1880-1929) / The Hounds

James Stephens (1882-1950) / A Glass of Beer

T.E. Hulme (1883-1917) / The Embankment (The Fantasia of a Fallen Gentleman on a Cold, Bitter Night)

Conversion

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) / A Sort of a Song

The Hard Listener

James Elroy Flecker (1884-1916) / No Coward's Song

Anna Wickham (1884-1947) / Gift to a Jade

Soul's Liberty

Sir John Squire (1884-1958) / Interior

Elinor Wylie (1885-1928) / Let No Charitable Hope

Cold-Blooded Creatures

D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930) / Piano

I Am Like a Rose

Glory

What Would You Fight For?

To Women, As Far As I'm Concerned

Intimates

Andrew Young (1885-1971) / In Teesdale

A Dead Mole

Ba Cottage

Ezra Pound (1885-1972) / The Garden: En robe de parade. Samain

The Lake Isle

Frances Cornford (1886-1960) / Childhood

All Souls' Night

Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) / 'Blighters'

Base Details

The General

Everyone Sang

'In me, past, present, future meet'

Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962) / Ave Caesar

Eagle Valor, Chicken Mind

Edith Sitwell (1887-1964) / Bells of Grey Crystal

Marianne Moore (1887-1972) / Poetry

A Face

I May, I Might, I Must

A Jellyfish

T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) / Cousin Nancy.

John Crowe Ransom (1888-1974) / Emily Hardcastle, Spinster

Ivor Gurney (1890-1937) / After War

On the Night

The Escape

Moments

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) / Never May the Fruit Be Plucked

To a Young Poet

The True Encounter

Hugh MacDiarmid (1892-1978) / One of the Principal Causes of War

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) / Arms and the Boy

Richard Church (1893-1972) / Be Frugal

E.E. Cummings (1894-1962) / 'Buffalo Bill's'

'may my heart always'

'no time ago'

'Me up at does'

Mark van Doren (1894-1972) / Good Appetite

Robert Graves (1895- ) / Flying Crooked

At First Sight

On Dwelling

The Beach

Cat-Goddesses

In Her Only Way

She Is No Liar

In Perspective

Edmund Blunden (1896-1974) / Departure

Hart Crane (1899-1932) / Black Tambourine

Robert Francis (1901- ) / Pitcher

Roy Campbell1902-1957) / Fishing Boats in Martigues

Patrick MacDonogh (1902-1961) / No Mean City

A.S.J. Tessimond (1902-1962) / Postscript to a Pettiness

Stevie Smith (1902-1971) / The Murderer

The Lads of the Village

Love Me!

Lady 'Rogue' Singleton

C. Day Lewis (1904-1972) / Where Are the War Poets?

Richard Eberhart (1904-1953) / For a Lamb

Norman Cameron (1905-1953) / She and I

The Compassionate Fool

Forgive Me, Sire

Shepherdess

Phyllis Mcginley (1905-1978) / The Temptations of Saint Anthony

The Adversary

Trinity Place

Patrick Kavanagh (1906-1967) / Leave Them Alone

Vernon Watkins (1906-1967) / Old Triton Time

Samuel Beckett (1906- ) / Gnome

John Betjeman (1906-1984) / Death of King George V

Remorse

William Empson (1906-1984) / Let It Go

Louis Macneice (1907-1963) / Snow

The Ear

Night Club

Precursors

Figure of Eight

W.H. Auden (1907-1973) / Gare du Midi

Epitaph on a Tyrant

'Base words are uttered' 'Behold the manly mesomorph'

At the Party

August1968

A.D. Hope (1907- ) / The Bed

Theodore Roethke (1908-1963) / Old Florist

Dolor

Night Crow

Wish for a Young Wife

W.R. Rodgers (1909-1969) / Words

War-Time

The Lovers

James Reeves (1909-1978) / The Stone Gentleman

The Double Autumn

Things to Come

Robert Fitzgerald (1910-1985) / Entreaty

Norman MacCaig (1910- ) / Stars and Planets

Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) / Casabiance

J.V. Cunningham (1911- ) / In Innocence

'I had gone broke'

Interview with Doctor Drink

Roy Fuller (1912- ) / During a Bombardment by V-Weapons

Memorial Poem: N.S. 1888-1949

The Hittites

F.T. Prince (1912- ) / The Wind in the Tree

George Barker (1913- ) / 'The village coddled in the valley'

Epitaph for the Poet

'Not in the poet'

R.S. Thomas (1913- ) / Ire

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) / 'On no work of words'

Twenty-Four Years

Randall Jarrell (1914-1965) / The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

A War

Well Water

Clifford Dyment (1914-1971) / Fox

John Berryman (1914-1972) / He Resigns

KingDavid Dances

Norman Nicholson (1914-1982) / Weather Ear

Laurie Lee (1914- ) / Invasion Summer

C.H. Sisson (1914- ) / Money

Easter

Judith Wright (1915- ) / Portrait

Thomas Blackburn (1916-1977) / Families

John Ciardi (1916- ) / Plea

Gavin Ewart (1916- ) / Ending

A 14-Year-Old Convalescent Cat in the Winter

Robert Lowell (1917-1977) / Lady Ralegh's Lament

William Jay Smith (1918- ) / American Primitive

Muriel Spark (1918- ) / Faith and Works.

William Meredith (1919- ) / Iambic Feet Considered as Honorable Scars

D.J. Enright (1920- ) / The Monuments of Hiroshima

Development

Howard Nemerov (1920- ) / An Old Picture

A Negro Cemetery Next to a White One

The Death of God

Casting

Drummond Allison (1921-1943) / O Sheriffs

King Lot's Envoys

Richard Wilbur (1921- ) / Epistemology

Parable

Piazza di Spagna, Early Morning

Mind

The Proof

Anthony Hecht (1922- ) / Avarice

Philip Larkin(1922- ) / Home Is So Sad

Water

Days

As Bad as a Mile

Alan Dugan (1923- ) / Memories of Verdun

Robert Creeley (1926- ) / I Know a Man

Elizabeth Jennings (1926- ) / Answers

James Merrill (1926- ) / A Renewal

Galway Kinnell (1927- ) / In a Parlor Containing a Table

W.S. Merwin (1927- ) / When the War Is Over

James Michie (1927- ) / To My Daughter

X.J. Kennedy (1929- ) / Nude Descending a Staircase

Last Child: for Daniel

Ted Hughes (1930- ) / Cat and Mouse

Thistles

Full Moon and Little Frieda

Water

P.J. Kavanagh (1931- ) / Praying

Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) / Frog Autumn

Barren Woman

Adrian Mitchell (1932- ) / Riddle

John Updike (1932- ) / Upon Shaving Off One's Beard

James Simmons (1933- ) / A Birthday Poem: for Rachel

Anne Stevenson(1933- ) / Sous-Entendu

The Demolition

Seamus Heaney (1939- ) / Mother of the Groom

Derek Mahon (1941- ) / Tractatus: for Aidan Higgins.