Where to Find Poems to Analyze
There is a substantial collection of excellent poetry you can peruse at www.poetryoutloud.org – as of 2020, they have added a “Collections” feature that helps you discover a poem by topic, and they’ve also added searching by keyword.
Poetry Magazine also has an extensive list of poems, and even more options for the collections. Go to www.poetryfoundation.org to check it out!
Many of these poems are pretty famous, we strongly discourage you from looking up some website’s interpretation of your poem. That’s plagiarism, as it consists of you writing someone else’s interpretation of what really matters in your poem. Remember, what matters is that you come up with your own interpretation of what the poem is all about. We’d rather read an analysis that misses some important points, or that gets it wrong occasionally, than one that comes from some online “expert” opinion, that may not even be all that good to begin with.
Finally, be cautious of blog poems that have not really been vetted by any panel of judges or editors. A lot of them… a LOT of them… are really not poems that stand up to close examination very well.
Need more help?
List Of Great Poetry
(according to your English teachers)
These are all fantastic poems, and nearly all of these can be found online by typing in the poem’s title and poet’s name.
Finally, a reminder: As many of these poems are pretty famous, we strongly discourage you from looking up some website’s interpretation of your poem. That’s plagiarism, as it consists of you writing someone else’s interpretation of what really matters in your poem. Come on. You are smarter than Shmoop.
| POEM | POET | # of lines | It is “about”… |
| Anthem For Doomed Youth | Owen, Wilfred | 14 | War and Youth |
| Annabel Lee | Poe, Edgar Allan | 41 | Creepy love |
| Another Feeling | Stone, Ruth | 18 | Regret |
| Archaic Torso of Apollo | Rilke, Rainer Maria | 14 | What we know |
| Argument in a Restaurant | Rathburn, Chelsea | 32 | Trials of love |
| Bagpipe Music | Macneice, Louis | 34 | Really odd |
| Death, Be Not Proud | Donne, John | 14 | Mortality |
| Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night | Thomas, Dylan | 19 | Father’s death |
| Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep | Frye, Mary | 14 | Death/Immortality |
| Domestic Violence | Boland, Eavan | 48 | Silence & Guilt |
| Dover Beach | Arnold, Matthew | 37 | Eternity |
| Dulce Et Decorum Est | Owen, Wilfred | 28 | War is Hell |
| Emperor of Ice-Cream, The | Stevens, Wallace | 16 | Weird |
| Equator | Stone, D.C. | 14 | Broken relationship |
| Funeral Blues | Auden, W. H. | 16 | Mourning / Loss |
| God’s Grandeur | Hopkins, Gerard Manley | 14 | Piety |
| Hand That Signed The Paper, The | Thomas, Dylan | 16 | Fate & Power |
| Ice | Mazur, Gail | 24 | Love and Youth |
| Invictus | Henley, W. E. | 16 | Self-pride |
| Irish Airman Forsees his Death, An | Yeats, W. B. | 16 | War / Mortality |
| Jabberwocky | Carroll, Lewis | 28 | Nonsense / Heroes |
| Jenny Kissed Me | Hunt, Leigh | 8 | Cute |
| Kubla Khan | Coleridge, Samuel T. | 36 | Trippy / Paradise |
| Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds | Shakespeare, William | 14 | Eternal love |
| London | Blake, William | 16 | Life is horrible |
| Man He Killed, The | Hardy, Thomas | 20 | War/Circumstance |
| Mid-Term Break | Heaney, Seamus | 22 | Youth & Death |
| Miniver Cheevy | Robinson, E. A. | 32 | Chivalry / Sadness |
| mother, the | Brooks, Gwendolyn | 32 | Motherhood /Loss |
| Musee Des Beaux Arts | Auden, W. H. | 22 | Suffering |
| My Last Duchess | Browning, Robert | 56 | Revenge & Hatred |
| My Mistress’s Eyes Are Nothing Like The Sun | Shakespeare, William | 14 | Individual Love |
| Not Marble, Nor the Gilded Monuments | Shakespeare, William | 14 | Immortality |
| Not Waving But Drowning | Smith, Stevie | 12 | Misunderstanding |
| On the Eve of His Execution | Tichborne, Chidiock | 18 | Facing death |
| On My First Son | Jonson, Ben | 16 | Mourning & Loss |
| Orange, The | Cope, Wendy | 12 | Being in love |
| Oxen, The | Hardy, Thomas | 16 | Faith |
| Passionate Shepherd to his Love, The | Marlowe, Christopher | 24 | Love / Persuasion |
| Pied Beauty | Hopkins, Gerard | 11 | Religion |
| Poison Tree, A | Blake, William | 16 | Vengeance |
| Psalm of Life, A | Longfellow, H. W. | 28 | Inspirational |
| Red, Red Rose, A | Burns, Robert | 16 | Scottish |
| Road Not Taken, The | Frost, Robert | 20 | Choices |
| Second Coming, The | Yeats, WB | 22 | Things fall apart |
| She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways | Wordsworth, William | 12 | Death / love |
| She Walks in Beauty | Lord Byron | 18 | Love / Worship |
| Soldier, The | Brooke, Rupert | 14 | War / Patriotism |
| Sorrows of Werther | Thackeray, William | 16 | Dry Humor/Death |
| Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening | Frost, Robert | 16 | Nature / Death? |
| Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever, A | Keats, John | 13 | Beauty |
| To An Athlete Dying Young | Housman, A. E. | 28 | Fame and Death |
| To Celia | Jonson, Ben | 16 | Love |
| Unknown Citizen, The | Auden, W. H. | 30 | Bureaucracy |
| We Wear the Mask | Dunbar, Paul | 15 | Image & Honesty |
| What We Might Be, What We Are | Kennedy, X. J. | 16 | Foolish / Love |
| When I Was One-and-Twenty | Housman, A.E. | 16 | Love / Youth / Irony |
| When You Are Old | Yeats, W.B. | 12 | Beauty / age |
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