Title/From Begins Poet The Ballad of Chevy Chase It fell about the Lammas tide, Anonymous Horatius But meanwhile axe and lever Lord Macaulay The Armada From Eddystone to Berwick bounds, Lord Macaulay Don Juan The isles of Greece! the isles of Greece! Lord Byron Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries. These, in the day when […]
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August 9 John Keats
John Keats celebrated his joy in discovering Homer through the Elizabethan translation of George Chapman in his sonnet “On first looking into Chapman’s ‘Homer’” Much have I travelled in the realms of gold And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft […]
June Poems Index
Title/From Begins Poet Faerie Queene And after her came jolly June arrayed Edmund Spenser Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard The curfew tolls the knell of parting day Thomas Gray The Deserted Village Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain, Oliver Goldsmith Forefathers Here they went with smock and crook Edmund Blunden Heaven Fish (fly […]
June 8 James Elroy Flecker
Thus new generations of poets, by their original use of language and its rhythms, re-create old themes. James Elroy Flecker, who died in l9l5, carries the hope of this progression into the future in his lines “To a Poet a thousand Years Hence”: he trusts that, in spite of all the developments of technology, poets […]
April Poems Index
Title/From Begins Poet Calendar of Nature – April Next came fresh April, full of lustyhed, Edmund Spenser April April, April, Laugh thy girlish laughter William Watson Canterbury Tales Whan that April with his shoures soote Geoffrey Chaucer Tewkesbury Road It’s good to be out on the road, John Masefield Sea Fever I must go down […]
April 8 Browning
Robert Browning spent much of his life in Italy and in eighteen forty-five, in April ,during his first journey to that country, he gave us his “Home Thoughts, From Abroad” which lead us from April to May. HOME THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD Oh, to be in England Now that April’s there, And whoever wakes in England […]
April 6 Masefield
Masefield, sensing the dramatic power of a group of waiting women used the same idea at the end of his yarn of the Loch Achray, the first of his salt water ballads, couched in the everyday language of an old seaman THE YARN OF THE LOCH ACHRAY Link to The Yarn of Loch Achray (Line […]
April 3 Chaucer
These also feature in the prologue to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, April being chosen for the imaginary pilgrimage, as a month of stirring activity alive with a general spirit of enterprise and adventure. GEOFFREY CHAUCER Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in […]
January Poems Index
Title/From Begins Poet “Love’s Labours Lost” When icicles hang by the wall, William Shakespeare “Faerie Queen” Then came old January Edmund Spenser Poetical sketches “O Winter bar thine adamantine doors William Blake Snow The room was suddenly rich Louis MacNeice London Snow When men were all asleep the snow came flying Robert Bridges Snow in […]
Poetry Monthly
Poems for Every Month The website being built here will list poems for each month of the year, chosen by Alan Wood, my father.