My 33 favourite short English poems

A poem for each day of the month, + 2 boni


This is my personal 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 as much by rote as we did then, so this 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. W H Auden, (Twelve Songs, IX),
  2. William Blake, (The Tyger),
  3. Rupert Brooke, (The Soldier),
  4. Robert Browning, (Home-Thoughts, from Abroad),
  5. Robbie Burns, (A red, red rose),
  6. Lord Byron, (She walks in Beauty),
  7. Lewis Carroll, (Jabberwocky),
  8. G.K.Chesterton, (The Donkey),
  9. G.K.Chesterton (again:-) , (The Rolling English Road),
  10. Wendy Cope, (Bloody men!),
  11. Roald Dahl, (The Tummy Beast),
  12. William Henry Davies, (Leisure),
  13. Leigh Hunt, (Jenny kissed me),
  14. Jenny Joseph, (Warning ! ),
  15. Rudyard Kipling, (IF - ),
  16. Philip Larkin, (This be the verse),
  17. Edward Lear, (The owl and the pussy-cat),
  18. John Gillespie Magee, (High Flight),
  19. Walter de la Mare, (Silver),
  20. Leo Marks, (Yours and yours and yours),
  21. John Masefield, (Cargoes),
  22. John Masefield (again:-) , (Sea Fever),
  23. Roger McGough, (Let me die a youngman's death),
  24. Wilfred Owen, (Dulce et decorum est),
  25. Henry Reed, (Naming of Parts),
  26. William Shakespeare, (Shall I compare thee . . .),
  27. Percy Bysshe Shelley, (Ozymandias of Egypt),
  28. Stevie Smith, (Not waving but drowning),
  29. Dylan Thomas, (Do not go gentle into that good night),
  30. Edward Thomas, (Adlestrop),
  31. William Wordsworth, (The daffodils),
  32. William Wordsworth (again:-) , (Upon Westminister Bridge).
  33. . . . and one nice last one, just for luck : Author unknown, Choosing Names.

Now, by way of contrast, go read some of my Vogon poetry :-)
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