List of Poems Featured in Six Centuries of Verse
Episode 1: Chaucer–Ted Hughes, 1384-1984Lewis Carroll
“You Are Old, Father William.” First appeared in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, published 1865. Geoffrey Chaucer
The Canterbury Tales. Composed in the 1390s, but Chaucer died before he could complete the work.
Chidiock Tichborne
“Elegy.” Composed in 1586, as the poet awaited his execution.
William Shakespeare
Prospero’s speech from The Tempest. Composed and performed in 1611, published in the First Folio in 1623.
George Herbert
“Redemption.” Published in 1633.
John Milton
Satan’s speech to Beelzebub from Paradise Lost. Published in 1667.
Jonathan Swift
“On Poetry, A Rhapsody.” Published in 1733.
William Blake
“London.” Published in 1794 in Songs of Experience.
William Wordsworth
“A slumber did my spirit seal.” Written in 1798, published in the 1800 edition of Lyrical Ballads.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
“The Mask of Anarchy.” Written in 1819.
Emily Brontë
“The Visionary.” Composed in 1845.
Emily Dickinson
“My life closed twice before its close.” Published posthumously in 1896.
Thomas Hardy
“In Church.” Published in 1914’s Satires of Circumstance.
William Butler Yeats
“Politics.” Composed in 1938, published in 1939.
Ted Hughes
“The Thought-Fox.” Published in The Hawk in the Rain, 1957.
Episode 2: Old English
Anonymous
Beowulf. Probably composed between 700 and 750 CE; oldest extant manuscript dates from ca. 1000.
Anonymous
Riddle poems. Oldest extant manuscript appears in the 10th c. Exeter Book.
Anonymous
“The Seafarer.” Appears in the Exeter Book.
Episode 3: Chaucer, 1340-1400
Geoffrey Chaucer
The Canterbury Tales. Composed in the 1390s, but Chaucer died before he could complete the work.
Episode 4: Medieval–Elizabethan, 1400-1600
Anonymous
“I sing of a maiden that is matchless, King of all Kings…” Christmas carol, composed in the fifteenth century.
Anonymous
“Corpus Christi Carol.” Middle English Christmas carol, first published in a 1504 manuscript.
John Skelton
“To Mistress Margaret Hussey.” Published in The Garlande of Laurell, 1523.
Chidiock Tichborne
“Elegy.” Composed in 1586, as the poet awaited his execution.
Thomas Nashe
“Summer’s Last Will and Testament.” Published in 1600.
Sir Walter Raleigh
“The Lie.” Published in1608, though possibly composed much earlier.
Christopher Marlowe
“The Passionate Shepherd to His Love.” Published in 1599.
Michael Drayton
Selection from Idea. Published in 1619.
William Shakespeare
Sonnet 129. Published in the first collection of Shakespeare’s sonnets in 1609.
Episode 5: Shakespeare, 1564-1616
William Shakespeare
The Life of Timon of Athens. First published in the First Folio of 1623.
Romeo and Juliet. Written between 1594 and 1596.
Henry V. First performed in 1599.
Twelfth Night. Written between ca. 1600 and 1602.
Hamlet. Written between ca. 1599 and 1601, first appeared in an unauthorized publication in 1603.
King Lear. Written between 1605 and 1606, first published in 1608.
Antony and Cleopatra. Written in 1606 and 1607, published in the First Folio in 1623.
Cymbeline. Written between 1608 and 1610, published in the First Folio in 1623.
The Tempest. Composed and performed in 1611, published in the First Folio in 1623.
Episode 6: Metaphysical & Devotional, 1590-1670
John Donne
“The Flea,” “The Sun Rising,” “The Good-Morrow,” and “The Apparition.” All published posthumously in 1633.
Selections from Holy Sonnets. Published posthumously in 1633.
George Herbert
“Redemption.” First published in 1633 in The Temple.
Andrew Marvell
“To His Coy Mistress.” Published posthumously in 1681.
Episode 7: Milton, 1608-1674
John Milton
Selections from Paradise Lost. Published in 1667.
“Sonnet 23.” Published in 1673.
Episode 8: Restoration & Augustan, 1660-1745
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
From “A Satire Against Reason and Mankind.” Published in 1675.
John Dryden
“MacFlecknoe.” First published in an unauthorized edition in 1682.
“Absalom and Achitophel.” Published in two parts: the first, undoubtedly by Dryden, in 1681; the second part, likely by another author, was published in 1682.
Jonathan Swift
“On Poetry, A Rhapsody.” Published in 1733.
“Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift.” Written between 1731 and 1732, published in 1739.
Alexander Pope
“Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot.” Published in 1735.
The Dunciad. Published anonymously in 1728.
Episode 9: Romantic Pioneers, 1750-1805
William Blake
“The Tyger.” Composed between 1790 and 1792, published in 1794.
Christopher Smart
“Jubilate Agno.” Composed between 1759 and 1763, first published in 1939.
William Blake
“Holy Thursday.” Published in 1789 in Songs of Innocence.
“Holy Thursday.” Published in 1794 in Songs of Experience.
“London.” Published in 1794 in Songs of Experience.
“A Poison Tree.” Published in 1794 in Songs of Experience.
“The Clod and the Pebble.” Published in 1794 in Songs of Experience.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“Kubla Khan.” Composed ca. 1797 to 1798, published in 1816.
William Wordsworth
“The Solitary Reaper.” Composed in 1805, published in 1807.
Episode 10: Wordsworth, 1770-1850
William Wordsworth
“The Daffodils.” Published in 1807’s Poems in Two Volumes.
Selections from The Prelude, or Growth of a Poet’s Mind. Composed between 1798 and 1805, published posthumously in 1850.
Episode 11: Younger Romantics, 1800-1824
Percy Bysshe Shelley
“Ozymandias.” Composed in 1817, published in 1818.
“The Mask of Anarchy.” Written in 1819.
John Keats
“La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad.” Composed in 1819, published in 1820.
“To Autumn.” Composed in 1819, published in 1820.
Percy Bysshe Shelly
“Adonais.” Composed and published in 1821.
George Gordon, Lord Byron
Don Juan. Composed in 1818, published in installments beginning in 1819 until Byron’s death.
Episode 12: Victorians, 1837-1901
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Selections from In Memoriam A.H.H. Composed between 1833 and 1850, published in 1850.
Emily Brontë
“The Visionary.” Published posthumously in 1850, composed in 1845.
Christina Rossetti
“Song.” Composed in 1848, published in 1862.
Robert Browning
“My Last Duchess.” Composed and published in 1842.
Matthew Arnold
“Dover Beach.” Composed ca. 1851, published in 1867.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
“The Garden of Proserpine.” Published in 1866.
Episode 13: American Pioneers, 1855-1910
Walt Whitman
Selections from “Song of Myself.” Published in Leaves of Grass in 1855.
Edgar Allen Poe
“The City in the Sea.” Published in 1845.
Julia Ward Howe
“Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Composed in 1861, published in 1866.
Herman Melville
“Shiloh: A Requiem.” Composed in 1862, published in 1866.
Emily Dickinson. Dickinson’s complete oeuvre was not published until 1955.
“This is my letter to the World.” Composed in 1862.
“I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –.” Composed in 1862.
“Because I could not stop for Death –.” Composed in 1863.
“My life closed twice before its close –.” Published posthumously in 1896.
Episode 14: Romantics & Realists, 1870-1920
Thomas Hardy
“He Never Expected Much.” Composed in 1926, published in 1928.
“The Ruined Maid.” Composed in 1866, published in 1901.
“In Church.” Published in 1914’s Satires of Circumstance.
“At Castle Boterel.” Published in 1914’s Satires of Circumstance.
“I Look into My Glass.” Published in 1898.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
“Pied Beauty.” Composed in 1877, published in 1918.
“The Windhover.” Composed in 1877, published in 1918.
“Spring and Fall.” Composed in 1880, published in 1893.
“I wake and feel the fell of dark.” Composed ca. 1885, published in 1918.
A.E. Housman
“Tell me not here, it needs not saying.” Published in 1922’s Last Poems.
“In valleys green and still.” Published in 1922’s Last Poems.
Rudyard Kipling
“The Story of Uriah.” Published in 1886’s Departmental Ditties and Other Verses.
Episode 15: Early Twentieth Century, 1914-1939
William Butler Yeats
“The Second Coming.” Composed in 1919, published in 1920’s The Dial.
“An Irish Airman Foresees His Death.” Published in 1919’s The Wild Swans at Coole.
“Politics.” Composed in 1938, published in 1939.
Wilfred Owen
“Anthem for Doomed Youth.” Composed in 1917, published posthumously in 1920.
Edward Thomas
“Old Man.” Composed ca. 1914 to 1917.
T.S. Eliot
Selections from The Waste Land. Composed in 1921, published in 1922.
W.H. Auden
“Musée des Beaux Arts.” Composed in 1938, published in 1940.
Episode 16: Towards the Present, 1934-1984
Dylan Thomas
“Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night.” Published in 1951.
“The Force that through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower.” Published in 1933.
Robert Lowell
“Skunk Hour.” Published in 1959’s Life Studies.
“For the Union Dead.” Published in 1964.
Phillip Larkin
“Church Going.” Composed in 1954, published in 1955.
“The Explosion.” Composed in 1970, published in 1974.
Ted Hughes
“The Thought-Fox.” Published in 1957.
