Here is a selection of my favorite poems. Thanks to The Library of Congress, Poetry Foundation, Academy of American Poets and The Josephine Hart Poetry Foundation for securing permission to reprint the works still under copyright.
Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.
-Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays & Speeches, p. 38
| Title | Author | Nationality | Era |
|---|---|---|---|
| Funeral Blues | W.H. Auden | English | Modernist |
| The More Loving One | W.H. Auden | English | Modernist |
| The Thing Is | Ellen Bass | American | Contemporary |
| Epitaph to a Dog | Lord Byron | English | Romantic |
| Late Fragment | Raymond Carver | American | Contemporary |
| On Turning Ten | Billy Collins | American | Modernist |
| Osso Buco | Billy Collins | American | Modernist |
| Life | Abraham Cowley | English | Metaphysical |
| You Are Tired, (I think) | E.E. Cummings | American | Modernist |
| Television | Roald Dahl | English | Contemporary |
| Death, be not proud | John Donne | English | Metaphysical |
| No Man is an Island | John Donne | English | Metaphysical |
| Desiderata | Max Ehrmann | American | Contemporary |
| Ranjish Hi Sahi (Even If In Resentment) | Ahmed Faraz | Pakistani | Contemporary |
| Fire and Ice | Robert Frost | American | Modernist |
| Stopping By The Woods | Robert Frost | American | Modernist |
| On Love | Khalil Gibran | Lebanese-American | Modernist |
| On Marriage | Khalil Gibran | Lebanese-American | Modernist |
| On Pleasure | Khalil Gibran | Lebanese-American | Modernist |
| Those Winter Sundays | Robert Haydon | American | Modernist |
| Scaffolding | Seamus Heaney | Irish | Contemporary |
| Invictus | William Ernest Henley | English | Victorian |
| Blur | Andrew Hudgins | American | Contemporary |
| Young and Old | Charles Kingsley | British | Victorian |
| If | Rudyard Kipling | British | Victorian |
| The New Colossus | Emma Lazarus | American | Romantic |
| The Fire of Driftwood | Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | American | Romantic |
| The Ladder of Saint Augustine | Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | American | Romantic |
| No Enemies | Charles Mackay | Scottish | Victorian |
| The Lesson of the Moth | Don Marquis | American | Modernist |
| To His Coy Mistress | Andrew Marvell | British | Metaphysical |
| Ashes of Life | Edna St. Vincent Millay | American | Modernist |
| Childhood is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies | Edna St. Vincent Millay | American | Modernist |
| I Think I Should Have Loved You Presently | Edna St. Vincent Millay | American | Modernist |
| Lament | Edna St. Vincent Millay | American | Modernist |
| Love is Not All | Edna St. Vincent Millay | American | Modernist |
| Pity Me Not | Edna St. Vincent Millay | American | Modernist |
| Don't Go Far Off | Pablo Neruda | Chilean | Contemporary |
| Soneto XVII | Pablo Neruda | Chilean | Contemporary |
| Tonight I Can Write The Saddest Lines | Pablo Neruda | Chilean | Contemporary |
| Next Time | Mary Oliver | American | Contemporary |
| Wild Geese | Mary Oliver | American | Contemporary |
| Dulce Et Decorum Est | Wilfred Owen | British | Modernist |
| Her | Ashwinee Panda | American | Contemporary |
| But Not Forgotten | Dorothy Parker | American | Contemporary |
| I Know I Have Been Happiest | Dorothy Parker | American | Contemporary |
| Purposely Ungrammatical Love Song | Dorothy Parker | American | Contemporary |
| Recurrence | Dorothy Parker | American | Contemporary |
| Story of Mrs. W | Dorothy Parker | American | Contemporary |
| The Lady's Reward | Dorothy Parker | American | Contemporary |
| Veteran | Dorothy Parker | American | Contemporary |
| On Being a Woman | Dorothy Parker | American | Contemporary |
| Autumn Valentine | Dorothy Parker | American | Contemporary |
| Eingang (Initiation) | Rainer Maria Rilke | Austrian | Modernist |
| Her Kind | Anne Sexton | American | Confessional |
| Starry Night | Anne Sexton | American | Confessional |
| Young | Anne Sexton | American | Confessional |
| Hymn to the Penates | Robert Southey | British | Romantic |
| Ozymandius | Percy Bysshe Shelley | British | Romantic |
| Suicide in the Trenches | Siegfried Sassoon | British | Modernist |
| Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night | Dylan Thomas | Welsh | Modernist |
| When You Are Old | William Butler Yeats | Irish | Modernist |
Most of Auden's work will enter the public domain in 2044. Raymond Carver's A New Path to the Waterfall will enter in 2059. Roald Dahl's work will enter in 2061.
You can read more from the authors mentioned above at these websites:
e.e. cummings free poetry archive
Anniina Jokinen's Luminarium: Metaphysical Poets