Public Domain Poetry Archive

The Iliad

Homer · 24 sections

The Aeneid

Virgil · 12 sections

Paradise Lost

John Milton · 12 sections

Paradise Regained

John Milton · 4 sections

Inferno

Dante Alighieri · 34 sections

Purgatorio

Dante Alighieri · 33 sections

Paradiso

Dante Alighieri · 33 sections

The Task

William Cowper · 6 sections

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Samuel Taylor Coleridge · 7 sections

Endymion

John Keats · 4 sections

Don Juan

Lord Byron · 17 sections

Hyperion

John Keats · 3 sections

Lamia

John Keats · 2 sections

Metamorphoses

Ovid · 15 sections

Shakespeare’s Sonnets

William Shakespeare · 154 sections

Modern Love

George Meredith · 50 sections

Phantasmagoria

Lewis Carroll · 7 sections

The Eclogues

Virgil · 10 sections

Manfred

Lord Byron · 3 sections

Adonais

Percy Bysshe Shelley · 55 sections

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

Lord Byron · 4 sections

In Memoriam A. H. H.

Alfred Lord Tennyson · 133 sections

Amoretti

Edmund Spenser · 89 sections

Astrophil and Stella

Sir Philip Sidney · 119 sections

Holy Sonnets

John Donne · 19 sections

The Prelude

William Wordsworth · 14 sections

A Calendar of Sonnets

Helen Hunt Jackson · 12 sections

The Faerie Queene

Edmund Spenser · 7 sections

Beowulf

Anonymous (Beowulf) · 41 sections

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

The Gawain Poet · 4 sections

The Waste Land

T. S. Eliot · 5 sections

Aurora Leigh

Elizabeth Barrett Browning · 9 sections

Gitanjali

Rabindranath Tagore · 103 sections

Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (1859)

Omar Khayyam · 75 sections

The Bhagavad Gita

Vyasa · 18 sections

The Ramayana — Griffith edition

Valmiki · 6 sections

Songs of Kabir

Kabir · 100 sections

Song of Myself

Walt Whitman · 52 sections

The Song of Hiawatha

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · 23 sections

The Canterbury Tales

Geoffrey Chaucer · 25 sections

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

William Blake · 10 sections

Songs of Innocence

William Blake · 19 sections

Songs of Experience

William Blake · 27 sections

The Rape of the Lock

Alexander Pope · 5 sections

An Essay on Man

Alexander Pope · 4 sections

Shahnameh — historic English selection

Ferdowsi · 1 sections

Gilgamesh — Old Babylonian fragments

Anonymous (Gilgamesh) · 2 sections

WORLDS OF VERSE

Explore a tradition

Romantic

372 poems

Ancient Greek

29 poems

Roman

40 poems

Shakespeare

220 poems

Blake

64 poems

Epic

232 poems

Mystical

372 poems

Renaissance

282 poems

Augustan

52 poems

Victorian

426 poems

American

339 poems

French

21 poems

German

2 poems

Chinese

15 poems

Modernist Poetry

9 poems

Japanese Poetry

2 poems

THE VOICES

Meet the poets

Alexander Pope

English · 1688–1744

19 poems ↗

Alfred Lord Tennyson

English · 1809–1892

153 poems ↗

Algernon Charles Swinburne

English · 1837–1909

12 poems ↗

Amy Levy

English · 1861–1889

Andrew Marvell

English · 1621–1678

Anna Lætitia Barbauld

English · 1743–1825

Anne Bradstreet

American · 1612–1672

9 poems ↗

Anne Brontë

English · 1820–1849

Arthur Hugh Clough

English · 1819–1861

Ben Jonson

English · 1572–1637

12 poems ↗

Catullus

Roman · -84–-54

Charles Baudelaire

French · 1821–1867

21 poems ↗

Charles Kingsley

English · 1819–1875

Charles Lamb

English · 1775–1834

Charlotte Brontë

English · 1816–1855

Charlotte Richardson

English · 1775–1825

0 poems ↗

Charlotte Smith

English · 1749–1806

Christina Rossetti

English · 1830–1894

13 poems ↗

Christopher Marlowe

English · 1564–1593

Coventry Patmore

English · 1823–1896

Dante Alighieri

Italian · 1265–1321

100 poems ↗

Dorothy Wordsworth

English · 1771–1855

Edgar Allan Poe

American · 1809–1849

Edmund Spenser

English · 1552–1599

99 poems ↗

Edward FitzGerald

English · 1809–1883

Edward Lear

English · 1812–1888

Eliza Cook

English · 1818–1889

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

English · 1806–1861

39 poems ↗

Emily Brontë

English · 1818–1848

14 poems ↗

Emily Dickinson

American · 1830–1886

72 poems ↗

Emily Dickinson

American · 1830–1886

35 poems ↗

Emma Lazarus

American · 1849–1887

Ernest Dowson

English · 1867–1900

Eugene Field

American · 1850–1895

Felicia Dorothea Hemans

Welsh · 1793–1835

Felicia Hemans

English · 1793–1835

0 poems ↗

Francis Thompson

English · 1859–1907

0 poems ↗

Geoffrey Chaucer

English · 1343–1400

George Crabbe

English · 1754–1832

George Eliot

English · 1819–1880

George Herbert

English · 1593–1633

18 poems ↗

George Meredith

English · 1828–1909

53 poems ↗

Gerard Manley Hopkins

English · 1844–1889

20 poems ↗

Hafiz of Shiraz

Persian · 1315–1390

Hannah More

English · 1745–1833

Hartley Coleridge

English · 1796–1849

Heinrich Heine

German · 1797–1856

Helen Hunt Jackson

American · 1830–1885

15 poems ↗

Henry David Thoreau

American · 1817–1862

Henry Vaughan

Welsh · 1621–1695

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

American · 1807–1882

47 poems ↗

Homer

Greek · -800–-700

48 poems ↗

Horace

Roman · -65–-8

Jalal ad-Din Rumi

Persian · 1207–1273

James Whitcomb Riley

American · 1849–1916

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

German · 1749–1832

John Clare

English · 1793–1864

20 poems ↗

John Donne

English · 1572–1631

31 poems ↗

John Dryden

English · 1631–1700

John Greenleaf Whittier

American · 1807–1892

John Keats

English · 1795–1821

41 poems ↗

John Milton

English · 1608–1674

24 poems ↗

Jonathan Swift

Irish · 1667–1745

Julia Ward Howe

American · 1819–1910

Katherine Philips

Welsh · 1632–1664

Leigh Hunt

English · 1784–1859

Leigh Hunt

English · 1784–1859

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

English · 1802–1838

Lewis Carroll

English · 1832–1898

14 poems ↗

Li Bai

Chinese · 701–762

Lord Byron

English · 1788–1824

60 poems ↗

Louisa May Alcott

American · 1832–1888

Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

English · 1861–1907

Mary Lamb

English · 1764–1847

Mary Robinson

English · 1757–1800

Matthew Arnold

English · 1822–1888

Michael Drayton

English · 1563–1631

Oliver Goldsmith

Irish · 1728–1774

Oliver Wendell Holmes

American · 1809–1894

Oscar Wilde

Irish · 1854–1900

Ovid

Roman · -43–17

15 poems ↗

Paul Laurence Dunbar

American · 1872–1906

9 poems ↗

Percy Bysshe Shelley

English · 1792–1822

91 poems ↗

Phillis Wheatley

American · 1753–1784

Ralph Waldo Emerson

American · 1803–1882

Richard Crashaw

English · 1613–1649

Richard Lovelace

English · 1617–1657

Robert Browning

English · 1812–1889

Robert Burns

Scottish · 1759–1796

Robert Herrick

English · 1591–1674

20 poems ↗

Robert Louis Stevenson

Scottish · 1850–1894

12 poems ↗

Robert Southey

English · 1774–1843

7 poems ↗

Robert Southey

English · 1774–1843

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

English · 1772–1834

28 poems ↗

Sappho

Greek · -630–-570

Sidney Lanier

American · 1842–1881

Sir John Suckling

English · 1609–1642

Sir Philip Sidney

English · 1554–1586

129 poems ↗

Sir Thomas Wyatt

English · 1503–1542

Sir Walter Raleigh

English · 1552–1618

Sir Walter Scott

Scottish · 1771–1832

Sir Walter Scott

Scottish · 1771–1832

Stephen Crane

American · 1871–1900

Thomas Chatterton

English · 1752–1770

Thomas Chatterton

English · 1752–1770

Thomas Gray

English · 1716–1771

Thomas Hood

English · 1799–1845

Thomas Moore

Irish · 1779–1852

Virgil

Roman · -70–-19

22 poems ↗

Walt Whitman

American · 1819–1892

83 poems ↗

Walter Savage Landor

English · 1775–1864

Walter Savage Landor

English · 1775–1864

William Allingham

Irish · 1824–1889

William Blake

English · 1757–1827

81 poems ↗

William Cowper

English · 1731–1800

16 poems ↗

William Cullen Bryant

American · 1794–1878

William Ernest Henley

English · 1849–1903

7 poems ↗

William Morris

English · 1834–1896

William Shakespeare

English · 1564–1616

220 poems ↗

William Wordsworth

English · 1770–1850

22 poems ↗

T. S. Eliot

British-American · 1888–1965

W. B. Yeats

Irish · 1865–1939

Anonymous (Beowulf)

Old English · –

41 poems ↗

The Gawain Poet

English · –

Rabindranath Tagore

Indian · 1861–1941

103 poems ↗

Omar Khayyam

Persian · 1048–1131

75 poems ↗

Vyasa

Indian · –

18 poems ↗

Valmiki

Indian · –

Ferdowsi

Persian · –

Attar of Nishapur

Persian · –

Kabir

Indian · –

100 poems ↗

Anonymous (Gilgamesh)

Mesopotamian · –

Du Fu

Chinese · 712–770

Wang Wei

Chinese · 699–761

Matsuo Bashō

Japanese · 1644–1694

Mirabai

Indian · –