EDWARD LEAR from A Book of Nonsense1846 EDWARD LEAR from A Book of Nonsense
‘There was an Old Man with a beard’
‘There was an Old Person of Basing’
‘There was an Old Man of Whitehaven’
EMILY JANE BRONTE ‘The night is darkening round me’
EMILY JANE BRONTE ‘Fall leaves fall die flowers away’
EMILY JANE BRONTE ‘All hushed and still within the house’
1847 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON from The Princess
‘Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white’
‘Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height’
1849 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR ‘I strove with none, for none was worth my strife’
MATTHEW ARNOLD from Resignation. To Fausta (‘He sees the gentle stir of birth’)
1850 EMILY JANE BRONTE and CHARLOTTE BRONTE The Visionary
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON from In Memoriam A.H.H.
II ‘Old Yew, which graspest at the stones’
VII ‘Dark house, by which once more I stand’
XI ‘Calm is the morn without a sound’
LVI ‘ “So careful of the type?” but no’
CXV ‘Now fades the last long streak of snow’
THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES from Death’s Jest Book, or the Fool’s Tragedy ‘And what’s your tune?’
1851 THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES from The Last Man
1852 MATTHEW ARNOLD To Marguerite – Continued
1853 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR ‘Our youth was happy: why repine’
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR Separation
1854 JAMES HENRY ‘Another and another and another’
JAMES HENRY ‘The son’s a poor, wretched, unfortunate creature’
1855 ROBERT BROWNING Love in a Life
ROBERT BROWNING How It Strikes a Contemporary
ROBERT BROWNING Two in the Campagna
COVENTRY PATMORE from Victories of Love, Book 1, 2 1856 ‘He that but once too nearly hears’
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH from Amours de Voyage (Canto II) 1858
V ‘Yes, we are fighting at last, it appears’
VII ‘So, I have seen a man killed!’
VIII ‘Only think, dearest Louisa’
IX ‘It is most curious to see what a power’
X ‘I am in love, meantime, you think’
EDWARD FITZGERALD from Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám 1859 ‘Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night’
WILLIAM BARNES My Orcha’d in Linden Lea
WILLIAM BARNES False Friends-like
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON Tithonus 1860
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI / DANTE Sestina: of the Lady Pietra degli 1861 Scrovigni
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI Song (‘When I am dead, my dearest’)
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI Winter: My Secret
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING Lord Walter’s Wife
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING A Musical Instrument
GEORGE MEREDITH from Modern Love
I ‘By this he knew she wept with waking eyes’
XVII ‘At dinner she is hostess, I am host’
XXXIV ‘Madam would speak with me. So, now it comes’
L ‘Thus piteously Love closed what he begat’
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH The Latest Decalogue
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE Free Thought
WILLIAM BARNES Leaves a-Vallèn
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR Memory 1863
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI Sudden Light
ROBERT BROWNING Youth and Art 1864
JOHN CLARE ‘The thunder mutters louder and more loud’
LEWIS CARROLL from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 1865
‘ “You are old, Father William,” the young man said’
‘They told me you had been to her’
GEORGE ELIOT In a London Drawingroom
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH from Dipsychus “There is no God,” the wicked saith’
1866 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE ItyluS
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE from Sapphics ‘All the night sleep came not upon my eyelids’
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI The Queen of Hearts
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI ‘What Would I Give’
1867 MATTHEW ARNOLD Dover Beach
DORA GREENWELL A Scherzo. (A Shy Person’s Wishes)
1868 CHARLES TURNER On a Vase of Gold-Fish
MORTIMER COLLINS Winter in Brighton
1869 MATTHEW ARNOLD ‘Below the surface-stream, shallow and light’
1870 AUGUSTA WEBSTER from A Castaway ‘Poor little diary, with its simple thoughts’
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI A Match with the Moon
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI The Woodspurge
1871 EDWARD LEAR ‘There was an old man who screamed out’
EDWARD LEAR The Owl and the Pussy-Cat
1872 LEWIS CARROLL from Through the Looking-Glass ‘In winter, when the fields are white’
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI from Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book
‘Dead in the cold, a song-singing thrush’
ROBERT BROWNING [Rhyme for a Child Viewing a Naked Venus]
1875 CHRISTINA ROSSETTI By the Sea
1877 COVENTRY PATMORE Magna est Veritas
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS The Windhover: To Christ our Lord
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS Pied Beauty
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS from The Wreck of the Deutschland ‘Thou mastering me’
1878 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE A Forsaken Garden
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE A Vision of Spring in Winter
1880 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON Rizpah
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI ‘Summer is Ended’
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS Inversnaid
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS ‘As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame’
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON from Treasure Island Pirate Ditty
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON ‘Last night we had a thunderstorm in style’
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM ‘Everything passes and vanishes’ 1882
AMY LEVY Epitaph (On a Commonplace Person Who Died in 1884 Bed)
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON To E. FitzGerald 1885
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS Spelt from Sibyl’s Leaves
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS ‘I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day’
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI from A Trip to Paris and Belgium 1886
ANONYMOUS Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye 1887
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON To Mrs Will H. Low
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON ‘My house, I say. But hark to the sunny doves’
MAY KENDALL Lay of the Trilobite
A. MARY F. ROBINSON Neurasthenia 1888
AMY LEVY A Ballade of Religion and Marriage 1889
W. B. YEATS Down by the Salley Gardens
RUDYARD KIPLING Danny Deever 1892
W. B. YEATS The Sorrow of Love
JOHN DAVIDSON Thirty Bob a Week 1894
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON To S. R. Crockett 1895
ALICE MEYNELL Cradle-Song at Twilight
MARY E. COLERIDGE An Insincere Wish Addressed to a Beggar 1895
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI Promises Like Pie-crust
ERNEST DOWSON Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam
A. E. HOUSMAN from A Shropshire Lad
XII ‘When I watch the living meet’
XL ‘Into my heart an air that kills’
LII ‘Far in a western brookland’
JOHN DAVIDSON A Northern Suburb
1897 ARTHUR SYMONS White Heliotrope
1898 OSCAR WILDE from The Ballad of Reading Gaol ‘He did not wear his scarlet coat’
THOMAS HARDY Thoughts of Phena
1900 THOMAS HARDY The Darkling Thrush
1906 WALTER DE LA MARE The Birthnight
1908 MARY E. COLERIDGE No Newspapers
MICHAEL FIELD (KATHERINE BRADLEY and EDITH COOPER) The Mummy Invokes His Soul
1910 J. M. SYNGE The ’Mergency Man
1912 THOMAS HARDY The Convergence of the Twain
1913 EZRA POUND In a Station of the Metro
1914 H. D. (HILDA DOOLITTLE) Oread
THOMAS HARDY from Poems of 1912–13
EZRA POUND / RIHAKU from Cathay
The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter
CHARLES HAMILTON SORLEY ‘When you see millions of the mouthless dead’
T. S. ELIOT The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 1917
ISAAC ROSENBERG Break of Day in the Trenches
ISAAC ROSENBERG ‘A worm fed on the heart of Corinth’
THOMAS HARDY During Wind and Rain
EDWARD THOMAS Blenheim Oranges
WILFRED OWEN Anthem for Doomed Youth
SIEGFRIED SASSOON Base Details
SIEGFRIED SASSOON Everyone Sang 1919
RUDYARD KIPLING from Epitaphs of the War. 1914–18
LAURENCE BINYON For the Fallen (September 1914)
W. B. YEATS The Wild Swans at Coole
T. S. ELIOT Sweeney Among the Nightingales
EZRA POUND from Homage to Sextus Propertius
VI ‘When, when, and whenever death closes our eyelids’
EZRA POUND from Hugh Selwyn Mauberley 1920
II ‘The age demanded an image’
XII ‘The laws of God, the laws of man’
XXXIII ‘When the eye of day is shut’
XXXVII Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries
XL ‘Tell me not here, it needs not saying’
A. E. HOUSMAN ‘It is a fearful thing to be’
1922 T. S. ELIOT from The Waste Land
1923 D. H. LAWRENCE Medlars and Sorb-Apples
HILAIRE BELLOC On a General Election
HILAIRE BELLOC Ballade of Hell and of Mrs Roebeck
1925 ROBERT GRAVES Love Without Hope
ROBERT BRIDGES To Francis Jammes
EDMUND BLUNDEN The Midnight Skaters
BASIL BUNTING from Villon ‘Remember, imbeciles and wits’
HUGH MACDIARMID from Sangschaw
1926 HUGH MACDIARMID Empty Vessel
HUGH MACDIARMID from A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle ‘O wha’s the bride that cairries the bunch?’
1927 JAMES JOYCE from Pomes Penyeach Bahnhofstrasse
AUSTIN CLARKE The Planter’s Daughter
W. B. YEATS Sailing to Byzantium
W. B. YEATS from Meditations in Time of Civil War
VI The Stare’s Nest by My Window
W. B. YEATS Among School Children
W. H. AUDEN ‘Taller to-day, we remember similar evenings’
1929 D. H. LAWRENCE The Mosquito Knows
D. H. LAWRENCE To Women, As Far As I’m Concerned
D. H. LAWRENCE Innocent England
EDMUND BLUNDEN Report on Experience
ROBERT GRAVES Warning to Children
ROBERT GRAVES It Was All Very Tidy
W. H. AUDEN ‘This lunar beauty’ 1930
BASIL BUNTING from Chomei at Toyama 1932 ‘I have been noting events forty years’
D. H. LAWRENCE Bavarian Gentians
RUDYARD KIPLING The Bonfires 1933
W. B. YEATS In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz
DYLAN THOMAS The force that through the green fuse
HUGH MACDIARMID from On a Raised Beach 1934 ‘All is lithogenesis – or lochia’
WILLIAM EMPSON This Last Pain 1935
WILLIAM EMPSON Homage to the British Museum
W. H. AUDEN ‘Out on the lawn I lie in bed’ 1936
W. H. AUDEN ‘Now the leaves are falling fast’
PATRICK KAVANAGH Inniskeen Road: July Evening
XXIII ‘Crossing alone the nighted ferry’
XXXI ‘Because I liked you better’
A. E. HOUSMAN ‘Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on 1937 his wrists?’
JOHN BETJEMAN The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel
DAVID JONES from In Parenthesis
from Part 3 ‘And the deepened stillness’
from Part 7 ‘But sweet sister death’
AUSTIN CLARKE The Straying Student 1938
ROBERT GRAVES To Evoke Posterity
ELIZABETH DARYUSH ‘Children of wealth in your warm nursery’
LOUIS MACNEICE The Sunlight on the Garden
W. B. YEATS Long-legged Fly 1939
W. H. AUDEN In Memory of W. B. Yeats
LOUIS MACNEICE from Autumn Journal
I ‘Close and slow, summer is ending in Hampshire’
XV ‘Shelley and jazz and lieder and love and hymn-tunes’
W. H. AUDEN Musée des Beaux Arts 1940
JOHN BETJEMAN Pot-Pourri from a Surrey Garden
1941 LOUIS MACNEICE Meeting Point
1942 T. S. ELIOT from Little Gidding II ‘Ash on an old man’s sleeve’
NORMAN CAMERON Green, Green is El Aghir
PATRICK KAVANAGH from The Great Hunger
from I ‘Clay is the word and clay is the flesh’
III ‘Poor Paddy Maguire, a fourteen-hour day’
from XI ‘The cards are shuffled and the deck’
from XII ‘The fields were bleached white’
1943 HENRY REED Judging Distances
1944 H. D. (HILDA DOOLITLE) from The Walls Do Not Fall I ‘An incident here and there’
LAURENCE BINYON Winter Sunrise
LAURENCE BINYON The Burning of the Leaves
KEITH DOUGLAS Vergissmeinnicht
1945 ROBERT GRAVES To Juan at the Winter Solstice
W. H. AUDEN from The Sea and the Mirror Miranda
1949 EDWIN MUIR The Interrogation
1950 MARION ANGUS Alas! Poor Queen
1951 DYLAN THOMAS Over Sir John’s Hill
1952 DYLAN THOMAS Do not go gentle into that good night
W. H. AUDEN The Shield of Achilles
1954 JOHN BETJEMAN Devonshire Street W.1
NORMAN MACCAIG Summer Farm 1955
TED HUGHES The Thought-Fox 1957
LOUIS MACNEICE House on a Cliff
STEVIE SMITH Not Waving But Drowning
STEVIE SMITH Magna est Veritas
PATRICK KAVANAGH Come Dance with Kitty Stobling
THOM GUNN In Santa Maria del Popolo
MALCOLM LOWRY [Strange Type] 1962
CHRISTOPHER LOGUE / HOMER from Patrocleia
CHARLES TOMLINSON The Picture of J. T. in a Prospect of 1963 Stone
AUSTIN CLARKE Martha Blake at Fifty-One
SYLVIA PLATH Sheep in Fog 1965
SYLVIA PLATH The Arrival of the Bee Box
BASIL BUNTING from Briggflatts 1966 I ‘Brag, sweet tenor bull’
SEAMUS HEANEY Personal Helicon
TED HUGHES Full Moon and Little Frieda
JOHN MONTAGUE from A Chosen Light
GEORGE THEINER / MIROSLAV HOLUB The Fly
1968 GEOFFREY HILL Ovid in the Third Reich
ROY FISHER As He Came Near Death
ROY FISHER The Memorial Fountain
1969 MICHAEL LONGLEY Persephone
DOUGLAS DUNN A Removal from Terry Street
DOUGLAS DUNN On Roofs of Terry Street
IAIN CRICHTON SMITH Shall Gaelic Die?
1970 W. S. GRAHAM Malcolm Mooney’s Land
TOM LEONARD from Unrelated Incidents 3 ‘this is thi’
TED HUGHES from Crow A Childish Prank
GEOFFREY HILL from Mercian Hymns
I ‘King of the perennial holly-graves’
VI ‘The princes of Mercia were badger and raven’
VII ‘Gasholders, russet among fields’
XXVII ‘Now when King Offa was alive and dead’
CHARLES TOMLINSON Stone Speech
DEREK MAHON An Image from Beckett
ÉILEAN NÍ CHUILLEANÁIN Swineherd
ÉILEAN NÍ CHUILLEANÁIN The Second Voyage
1973 THOMAS KINSELLA Hen Woman
1974 PHILIP LARKIN This Be the Verse
1975 SEAMUS HEANEY from Singing School
DEREK MAHON A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford
D. J. ENRIGHT Remembrance Sunday
MICHAEL LONGLEY Man Lying on a Wall 1976
ELMA MITCHELL Thoughts after Ruskin
DONALD DAVIE from In the Stopping Train 1977 ‘I have got into the slow train’
NORMAN MACCAIG Notations of Ten Summer Minutes
W. S. GRAHAM Lines on Roger Hilton’s Watch
ROBERT GARIOCH The Maple and the Pine
GEOFFREY HILL from An Apology for the Revival of Christian 1978 Architecture in England
THOMAS KINSELLA Tao and Unfitness at Inistiogue on the River Nore
CRAIG RAINE A Martian Sends a Postcard Home 1979
SEAMUS HEANEY The Strand at Lough Beg
TOM PAULIN Where Art is a Midwife 1980
PAUL MULDOON Why Brownlee Left
PAUL DURCAN Tullynoe: Tête-à-Tête in the Parish Priest’s Parlour
PAUL DURCAN The Death by Heroin of Sid Vicious
JAMES FENTON A German Requiem 1981
DEREK MAHON Courtyards in Delft
SEAMUS HEANEY from Station Island VII ‘I had come to the edge of the water’
JOHN AGARD Listen Mr Oxford don
1987 PETER DIDSBURY The Hailstone
EAVAN BOLAND Self-Portrait on a Summer Evening
1988 CHARLES CAUSLEY Eden Rock
1989 TED HUGHES Telegraph Wires
1990 KEN SMITH Writing in Prison
CIARAN CARSON Belfast Confetti
NUALA NÍ DHOMHNAILL (trans. PAUL MULDOON) The Language Issue
EAVAN BOLAND The Black Lace Fan My Mother Gave Me
1991 SEAMUS HEANEY from Lightenings VIII ‘The annals say: when the monks of Clonmacnoise’
1992 DENISE RILEY A Misremembered Lyric
EILÉAN NÍ CHUILLEANÁIN Studying the Language